


Trenchconvention

by Zwetschge14



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chuck never stopped writing, Convention, M/M, Meta, TFW hunting together, and Becky never stopped publishing the stories online, human!Cas, of course she didnt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-23 21:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14941409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zwetschge14/pseuds/Zwetschge14
Summary: (Takes place after Season 8)After the angels fell, Sam and Dean made sure that Cas found his way to the bunker and helped him adjust to being human. The now fallen angels had mostly been quiet, which meant regular hunts for Sam and Dean. One of these brings them to a fan convention run by Becky – much to their dismay. And as if that and the dozen ghosts haunting the site of the convention wasn’t enough, they now have to deal not only with thousands of crazy fans, but particularly with a ridiculous number of people running around in trenchcoats, pretending to be Cas and the real Ghostfacers of all people.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I’ve ever finished that has more than 2k. A large part of me achieving this is thanks my friend, alpha, beta and cheerleader Nera_Solani, who believed in the story even when I didn’t. Thank you soooo much for dragging me into and through this!!
> 
> And also a huge thanks to [pherryt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pherryt/pseuds/pherryt) and [ThePlaidFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePlaidFox/pseuds/ThePlaidFox) for their absolutely stunning art!! I feel so lucky for having two such amazing artists illustrating my fic. Please do check out their art masterposts [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14939894) and [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14946842)

Dean stepped out into the main room of the bunker, coffee in one hand, sandwich in the other. He was hardly surprised when he found Sam already sitting in front of his laptop, probably researching cases. If he was being honest, he wouldn’t even be surprised to hear that Sam was sleeping with that thing. He could hardly be seen without it, unless they were out on a hunt.

“You been up long?” he asked while taking a big bite out of his sandwich. Sam glanced at him with a mix of judgement and disgust.

“No, just got up. Maybe 20 minutes. But I did already find us a possible case,” he announced and turned his laptop so that Dean could see what was on the screen.

“Hello, my dear, wonderful and brave Sam,” Dean read the first line and groaned. He could already guess who had sent that email.

> 'I’m sorry to bother you, I’m sure you are busy saving innocent people from vicious evil, but I was hoping I could ask you for a small favor, given our deep and personal connection. Chuck and I are holding another convention tomorrow in Coalburns, Michigan. We chose a building with history, of course. We had to make sure to get the right atmosphere for the event after all. Unfortunately we couldn’t check if the house was really haunted or not. Would it be in any way possible for you to come, just in case? I know you’re busy, but for me, please be here.
> 
> Love, Becky <3 <3 <3’

After he finished reading, Dean looked up into Sam’s eyes — which were almost pleading him not to comment on how Becky’s email was phrased — leading to a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, except for the noises of Dean’s chewing.

“Well anyway, did she even tell you which building that is?” he asked in-between bites. “And where’d Cas go?”

Sam turned the laptop back and switched to the browser window he’d kept open in the background.

“Cas is in his room, I think. He spent the whole night watching Black Mirror, because apparently, he didn’t check the time. I told him he might want to get some rest after all. Better late than never. As to that convention, it’s in an old, abandoned mental hospital. The gnarly kind.”

Dean’s face showed exactly how bad of an idea he thought that had been. “So, after what happened at their first convention, they — what? — said 'Oh that was fun’ and decided to do it again? 'Ah, but this time let’s do it in a place that might even be worse. Let’s do it somewhere where we might get a whole bunch of violent ghosts.’ Great girlfriend you got there, Sam. A real genius!”

“She’s not my…,” Sam started, but stopped himself. It wasn’t like he didn’t understand Dean’s anger, he was just as annoyed.

“At least they didn’t just ignore it, they are preparing this time. But I agree, they could’ve just looked for fake haunted houses, it’s not like those fans could tell the difference anyway.” Sam closed his laptop and leaned back.

“So… Obviously you went to sleep while Cas was still watching, but how long did you two stay up together?” Sam’s eyes sparkled with interest and amusement. It had been his idea to watch some tv in the evening, but he had retreated after less than a full episode, leaving Cas and Dean alone, watching the scariest show he could think of.

Dean started to blush slightly and stopped in the middle of taking a sip of his coffee. He stood still, just staring at Sam for a few seconds, before he managed to answer.

“Well, we finished that episode and watched two more, then I went to bed. Cas said he wanted to watch one more, because it sounded so interesting.” Dean paused for a moment, apparently thinking back to the evening. “Obviously it wasn’t just the one.”

“And that’s all?” Sam inquired further, but he knew, even if it wasn’t, there was no way he would get anything out of his brother if he wasn’t willing to tell him. They’d been through that many many times in various scenarios. Maybe he would have more success with Cas a bit later.

“Anyway, I’m not gonna drive all the way to Michigan, just because _Becky_ wants us to,” Dean commented absentmindedly as he finally sat down, his sandwich almost gone already.

“Yeah, I’m gonna look into it to see if this is really a case. But first I’m going to get my own breakfast.” Sam pushed back his chair, got up and started walking towards the kitchen. “That is, unless you want to get a head start on that?” he asked, knowing that Dean would never voluntarily do research when he had Sam to do that for him. As expected, Dean vigorously shook his head.

“I wouldn’t dream of taking your favorite pastime for you, Sammy,” he said with a full mouth and the hint of a smirk on his face.

Sam snorted, turned back around and kept walking.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey, Ed?” Harry was lying on the mat at the bottom of the mini bunk bed in their trailer.

No answer.

“Ed, you should really see this!” he tried again, a bit louder.

“What now?” he got his answer.

“Do you remember those Winchester douchebags?”

“How could I ever forget?” Ed grumbled.

“Well, apparently there’s books about them now.”

“There’s _what_?” Ed sat up forcefully enough to make the whole trailer shake. “These douchenozzles got books written about them while we’re still living in this trailer? I thought they had insisted on staying low profile. No one knowing they even existed, you know?”

Harry stayed silent while he was reading on his phone. “You won’t believe this. They have a huge fan base. There’s forum discussions, fan literature, meet-ups, even full-blown conventions. Hold up… There’s one in two days, just an hour’s drive from here.” Harry kept on reading, quietly mumbling to himself, which Ed pointedly ignored.

“So? What’s it to us? I mean, obviously we are really the ones who deserve fame, but as soon as we finally get our movie deal, we will leave them and their books in the dust,” Ed argued.

“Harry?” he asked and leaned over the ridge of his bed to see what his partner was up to after he didn’t get a response. Harry was still reading on his phone and didn’t seem to have heard him.

“Harry?” he tried again, his head hanging down from the top bed. When he still didn’t get a response, he grabbed an action figure from the shelf-like installation next to him and threw it at his friend, almost knocking his phone out of his hands.

“Hey,” Harry protested weakly, but still didn’t turn his attention to Ed.

“HARRY!” Ed shouted so loud that he almost fell out of his bed. Harry flinched and finally peeled his eyes off his phone’s screen.

“What? Did something happen? Did someone die?” he asked increasingly panicky. Ed rolled his eyes.

“No. You just didn’t answer my question. Or answer at all. What were you reading there anyway?”

Harry seemed to relax a little at Ed’s reassurance that nothing bad had happened.

“You scared me,” he complained, leaned back again to rest his back on the wall and sighed. Ed stopped himself from remarking that that had sort of been the point. It would’ve just distracted Harry from answering. Again.

“So get this…,” Harry continued, “… the house where they’re holding the convention is an old mental hospital where they — drumroll, please…” he looked expectantly at Ed but only got an annoyingly bored look back. After a few seconds of awkward silence Harry accepted that he wouldn’t get his drumroll and carried on.

“… they did experiments on the patients there. I mean torture experiments! They removed bits of the body parts they thought were somehow connected to that patient’s problems… you know, to cut the problems away. Literally. Oh, and they even made them torture other patients to see if that would make them feel better.”

“Ew,” Ed said. He was now listening rather interestedly. “At least they seem to have slightly decent taste in venues. Nothing beats a nice and scary nuthouse.”

There were a few minutes of silence when the two thought back to their last trip to an old, abandoned mental hospital. Finally, Harry broke the silence.

“How much would you bet that it’s haunted?”

“Oh, it’s definitely haunted,” Ed replied without hesitation.

“I bet there’s at least twenty ghosts there,” Harry whispered, weakly imitating a ghostly voice like the ones you might hear in movies.

Ed nodded slightly. “At least. All running around with knives and whips, waiting to go wild on anyone entering the hospital. And don’t forget the ghosts of teenagers who went in on a dare and never came out.” Ed made his words sound as eerie as he could, successfully making Harry’s flesh crawl.

“Wanna check it out tomorrow?” Harry asked.

“You even need to ask? Who better to do the job than the Ghostfacers?”

After they had decided to go and to stay for the convention too — not because they were interested in the convention itself, of course. They only wanted people to see how real ghost hunting was done — Ed went to sleep.

Harry stayed up a little bit longer. He was just as excited as Ed, but also concerned how it would go. It would be their first proper job in quite a while and he had to admit he wasn’t too eager to get himself into a life-threateningly dangerous situation. One that he knew would not give him any profits, other than a sense of adventure. Maybe he would quit this lifestyle after this trip. Depending on how it went.

Harry kept rolling around in his bed, as much as that was possible in the confined space of the trailer, until he finally fell into an uneasy sleep.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Sam had spent a mere hour researching the hospital where the convention was supposed to take place and had already found too many reports of ghost sighting, people going missing and a few other strange occurrences to simply ignore them. Most of the reports dated back about 40 or more years. After that, most parts of the building had been restored to make it safe and usable, from an architectural perspective at least. The reports stopped after that, but that might just be due to higher safety measures. Specifically the better locks and new fence around the perimeter. Most people just didn’t get close enough anymore to see anything.

“ _Dean?!_ ” he shouted to let his brother know he found something.

“I’ll be right with you, Sammy,” he got back from further back in the bunker. Not much later, Sam could hear Dean’s very familiar footsteps nearing.

“So, as much as I would like to avoid going to another of these conventions, judging from countless news reports, I’m afraid the place really is haunted. Most of the stories are non-violent and rather harmless, but-,” he stopped in the middle fo the sentence when he looked up and saw Dean standing in front of him, wearing a black suit, white shirt and — most importantly and strangely — a trenchoat. Cas’ trenchcoat.

“Dean, what are you wearing?” Sam asked, a questioning yet somewhat doubtful look in his eyes.

“What, you don’t like it?” Dean replied with a smirk. ”I thought if we’re going to that convention, with everybody dressing up like us, we could dress up as Cas.”

“Huh,” Sam nodded to himself. “That’s actually not a bad idea.” He turned back to his laptop and saved or noted the seemingly most important information and details that they might need to get rid of the ghost.

Meanwhile, Dean had taken off the trenchcoat again. As much as he liked, no _loved_ , Cas’ signature piece of clothing, it felt strange to wear it himself. It felt wrong, but at the same time it felt strangely nice. It made him feel closer to Cas.

Dean was about to start folding the coat, when a small rip in one of the sleeves caught his eye. It must have happened during the Fall. Cas had always taken good care of his trenchcoat. Sure, it had gotten ripped, burnt, stained and otherwise damaged in every imaginable way. Multiple times. But as soon as they had been out of danger, Cas had always fixed it. With his angel powers, that had probably been easy for him, hardly even requiring a conscious thought, but the simple fact that he had done that, showed that he cared about the coat at least as much as Dean did. And now it had been damaged, and with Cas being as human as a former angel could be, there was no way to fix it without leaving a mark. This time they would have to stitch it by hand.

Dean shook his head to clear his thoughts and continued to fold the coat. He left it on the chair that had now become Cas’ chair, not wanting to risk waking the sleeping angel — _former angel_ , Dean corrected himself — by putting it into the wardrobe in his room.

Only now did Dean notice that the beer bottles from the night before were still standing beside the couch. He’d had two, both of which were of course empty to the last drop, while Cas had only had one and that one was still almost full. He should probably check if Cas liked what he was eating or drinking in the future. Or maybe he had thought beer was a drink like water and had simply not been thirsty. Yeah, that sounded like him. Dean chuckled.

Sam had just finished what he had been doing and was surprised to see an amused expression on Dean’s face as he looked up. He followed his brother’s eyes, interested to know what the reason for his amusement was. Whatever Dean was looking at was just barely out of Sam’s sight, but it was clearly something next to the couch or the coffee table. That was all Sam needed to know.

'Oh, nothing at all happened last night, right?’ Sam thought, but kept his thought to himself. Dean had to come to terms with his _situation_ in his own time. It would help he if could at least admit his feelings to himself, but that was something Sam could help him even less with. The only person who had a chance to do that was Cas. Only, he didn’t exactly have a 'normal’ view of what love was and probably didn’t even realize that Dean might need help with that.

Sam sighed at how hopeless those two were sometimes.

About two hours later, Sam was still working on his laptop, but had now moved on to research about various things he’d read about in the men of letters journals and Dean was watching something on his own laptop, when Cas stumbled through the door. He was wearing the same underwear he had been wearing the night before, and the bathrobe that Dean had hung into his wardrobe, for when he wanted to take a shower. The purpose of wearing a bathrobe after showering instead of just putting on normal clothes escaped Cas, but he had appreciated it, when he had realized that he had no clothes in his room, except for the clothes he had worn before going to bed.

Cas stopped next to the table and looked from one of the brothers to the other. Both were apparently busy and hadn’t noticed Cas coming in. He wasn’t sure if he should announce that he was here, to make the two notice him or if he should just let them continue what they were doing. More automatically than consciously, he pulled the nearest chair out from under the table to sit down. The sound of wood scraping across the stone floor made both Winchesters look up from their screens to check where the noise had come from. Well, that solved the issue of making his presence known at least, Cas thought.

“Morning,” he mumbled sleepily. “Although, I suppose technically it’s closer to noon now.”

“Morning to you too, Cas,” Sam answered, while Dean took off his headphones to hear them properly.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty. Did you sleep alright? Sam told me you didn’t exactly go to sleep early,” Dean said.

“No, you can hardly call 7am early, when you’re talking about going to bed. I think. I slept quite well, but somehow I feel strange nonetheless. My body feels like it’s acting on its own, rather than doing what I tell it to. And my eyelids feel very heavy.” Cas blinked a few times as if to see if they were still working.

A quiet chuckle escaped Dean when he realized what Cas was describing.

“Well, after barely three hours of sleep, you’re probably just tired. Welcome to human life, where too little sleep gets you sleep deprivation. It’s never nice, but you’ll get used to it. You can catch some more sleep in the car.” Dean let his gaze wander up and down Cas’ poorly covered body, to check if there was anything physically wrong with him.

“In the car?” Cas asked confused.

“Oh yeah! Sam found us a case,” Dean explained, emphasizing the last word and putting as much revulsion into it as he possibly could, which only confused Cas even more.

“Cas, you remember the books that Chuck, the prophet, wrote?” Sam started. Cas nodded to confirm Sam’s assumption.

“Yes, of course. The Winchester gospels.”

Sam and Dean glanced at each other. They remembered that term of course, but it was still an uncomfortable feeling to hear anyone say it. Even if that person was just Cas.

Sam cleared his throat and continued. “Yes, well, they are viewed as just another fantasy book series by the public. However, they have managed to attract a large enough number of fans to organize meetings and events — so-called conventions. There is one taking place tomorrow and they have chosen an old mental hospital as a venue. I checked the hospital’s history and I’m almost certain that it’s haunted, so we’re going to check it out.”

“And make sure nobody gets themselves killed,” Dean added.

“That sounds reasonable,” Cas replied. “But I don’t see why you were planning on bringing me with you. I doubt I will be of much help to you, now that I’m human and don’t have any powers anymore.”

Dean closed his laptop and turned in his chair to have a more direct line of view to Cas. “Sam and I don’t have any powers either and we’ve been doing alright all these years. It’s just a matter of knowledge, practice and experience. And you already have plenty of the first one. You’ll get there eventually and we’re going to help you.” Dean got up and walked towards the door. When he walked past Cas he gave him a pat on the back.

“You’re a hunter in training now. But first let’s get you some proper clothes. I’m sure we’ll find something that’ll fit you until we get you your own wardrobe.” Dean walked out of the room and around the corner, so that he was no longer in sight.

“You coming, Cas?” his voice sounded from the hallway after a few seconds. Cas who had stayed in his chair until now, slowly got up and followed Dean with dragging steps.


	4. Chapter 4

“This thing is huge!” Harry exclaimed and turned around a couple of times to get the whole building on camera. “This is the north wing, there’s the east wing, the south wing is the one over there and the last two windows on that part of the building are part of the west wing,” he explained what he was filming. The doors to the east wing were open and a bunch of people were walking into and out of the building. Some of them were carrying boxes or furniture — mostly chairs — others were hurriedly running around, conveying messages and barking instructions. The preparations for the convention were in full swing.

Luckily, for Ed and Harry that meant that the guard who was assigned to keep unauthorized intruders out was almost exclusively focussed on the one wing and it should be possible to get in unnoticed through one of the other wings.

Harry tried to get the activity of the convention personnel on camera and moved closer and closer to the east wing.

“Psst, Harry!” Ed whispered. Harry swung around and almost hit his friend with the camera.

“Careful,” Ed protested. “Don’t get too close, they’ll see us and then they’ll keep a closer eye on the other wings.” He nodded to the north wing, which was the one closest to them, to say that they should get in there.

The door was locked, but one of the windows stood wide open, so they decided to climb in instead. Ed went first, stepping into Harry’s hands who then hefted him up as Ed was pulling himself through the window. The floor on the inside was slightly elevated, compared to the ground outside, so passing the cameras and the rest of the equipment was easy. Getting Harry inside was more of a challenge, but after three tries and a lot of floundering and dangling from the windowsill, they were finally both safely inside the hospital. As safe as you could be in a haunted building, that is.

The two self-proclaimed supernaturalists shouldered their backpacks, took their EMF-meters in one hand and their cameras in the other and started their inspection. They had barely even reached the nearest door, when the needles of the EMF-meters shot from their original position to the maximum on the scale and started bleeping very loudly. Nervously, Ed and Harry looked around, but there was no ghost in sight.

“It’s ghostly residue,” Ed explained whispering into the camera. “There are no ghosts here at the moment, but they must have been here before. And they could come back at any time.”

As they kept walking further and further into the hospital, their EMF’s kept bleeping steadily. The corridor ended in a heavy double door made of steel. Two very small windows allowed them to look into the corridor behind it. There was little difference to the one they had just been walking through. The design was exactly the same, but there were less windows and since the lamps were either off or broken, the atmosphere was a lot darker and scarier.

“Who wants to go first?” Harry asked tentatively.

“How about you, since you asked?” Ed replied, happy to avoid urging Harry to go first and looking like a coward, but not having to go first himself either.

Harry wished he hadn’t asked, but he couldn’t admit to Ed that he was scared, so he slowly walked past his friend and grabbed the door handle. Very cautiously, he pulled open the door, the EMF in his hand still bleeping relentlessly. Camera first, Harry stepped through the doorframe and into the second corridor. He shivered.

“I felt a chill!” he said a little more loudly than intended, which earned him a prompt 'Sshh’ from Ed.

“That’s because there’s a draft coming through the open door, dumbass,” his friend replied with a scolding tone. “Now move so I can follow you.”

Harry quickly walked a few steps further into the corridor. Ed followed, checking left and right multiple times, afraid a ghost was just waiting for them to both walk through the door to then attack them. When nothing happened, even after they’d been standing there for a few seconds, they both started relaxing a little.

“Looks like the ghosts are scared of us,” Harry whispered and turned around to film Ed. Quickly, Ed put on his bravest face to hide that he had actually been afraid no more than a moment ago.

“They’re right to be. After all, we’re here to kill them, so they can’t hurt anyone else,” Ed announced confidently.

“But they’re ghosts, Ed,” Harry mumbled, holding the camera as far away from himself as possible, in an attempt not to have his words recorded.

“So what? That’s the point, isn’t it?” Ed replied equally quiet.

“Well, they’re already dead. We can’t kill them.”

Ed gave Harry an annoyed look. “Then we’ll send them to ghost-heaven or ghost-hell or whatever. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is they’re gone. Right?”

“Right.” Harry nodded. “Right.”

They kept walking further and further. On one side of the corridor was just one long row of doors, which started out as normal wooden doors painted in white. The further they walked, the more damaged these doors looked, and finally there was hardly a door anymore that hadn’t been reinforced with strips of steel in at least three places. The wall on the other side of the corridor was almost completely covered by cupboards that were as high as the room, shelves filled with dusty jars and unidentifiable tools and a scary painting now and then. The occasional windows were the only sources of light and the further they went, the further apart they were.

They were exactly in the middle between two windows, the darkest spot they had passed so far, when Harry suddenly stopped and pointed at the floor.

“Is that blood?” he muttered shakily and excitedly at the same time. Ed followed Harry’s finger and saw a couple of small red stains on the white tiles a few feet in front of them.

“It might be,” Ed mumbled. “Let’s check if it is.” He waved for Harry to keep walking. They cautiously came towards the supposed blood splatters. Ed squeezed past Harry on the side of the doors, not noticing that one of the straps of his backpack got caught in one of the nearest door’s steel strips. When he started to feel a force pulling him backwards, against the direction he was trying to walk in, his heart skipped a beat.

“A ghost! A ghost! Get it off me! It has my bag, get it off!” he shouted in panic. In an effort to free his bag from the alleged ghost, he yanked at whatever straps he could grab, while trying to run forward and turn around to get a look at the ghost at the same time.

Harry had started to flee as soon as Ed had started shouting, but he now looked back to see what the ghost was doing to his friend and partner. Just in that moment, Ed finally managed to free his backpack with a particularly forceful yank. This however, caused the steel strip to bend and the door that had already been partially rotten and very fragile started to crumble. With a loud crash, it fell out of its hinges and into the corridor, raising huge clouds of dust off the floor and shelves.

The hints of sunlight coming in through the windows were diffracted and filtered by the dust particles. The resulting appearance of having extremely tall and thin silhouettes materialise beside the windows while bathing the Ghostfacers in even gloomier darkness just strengthened their belief that they had found the gruesome ghosts they’d been looking for.

Simultaneously, the two friends turned around and ran.

As slowly and carefully as they had advanced through the corridor before, the only thing they could think of now, was that they needed to escape. Whatever was lying ahead of them surely couldn’t be worse than the group of ghosts behind them.

“Ed!” Harry shouted, slightly out of breath already. “The shotgun.”

“Trailer,” was Ed’s only reply.

“What?” Harry shot Ed a confused look.

“I left it in the trailer,” Ed explained. He looked over to Harry only to be met by completely thunderstruck eyes.

“I didn’t want to be caught carrying an unlicensed shotgun in an old hospital. There are people in here,” he elaborated. “Don’t you have a bag of salt in your backpack?” Ed deflected.

“You really think I’m gonna stop to get that out of my bag? The ghost would grab me as soon as I’m slowing down! No way.”

Shouting and screaming, they finally reached the end of the corridor and burst through the door into the next one. The part of the hospital that they had now entered didn’t have any windows and it was so dark they could barely see further than ten feet. At one end however, they could make out a hint of light. Electric light. That had to be where the preparations for the convention were happening.

Without so much as a word, they both picked up their pace. The light was only painfully slowly getting closer, but the closer they got, the faster they ran.

'Almost there,’ Ed thought.

They dashed around the corner and almost crashed into a young woman that had just been about to check where the screams had come from.

“Careful where you’re going, I’m walking here! And no running, did no one tell you that?” She took a few steps backwards and dusted herself down. 'Wherever have those two been that they’ve caught this much dust,’ she wondered.

“Wait…,” she said and examined them from head to toe. The backpacks, the cameras and the EMF-meters… Yes, there was no mistaking it.

What were they thinking?

“Ghostfacers?” she asked incredulously.

Ed and Harry were speechless. Finally a fan! They had finally found a fan. And at a _Supernatural_ convention of all places. They exchanged looks, then turned back to the girl and nodded enthusiastically.

“Yes, that’s right!” Ed confirmed.

“You are really cosplaying the Ghostfacers?” she asked again. She just couldn’t believe that anyone would actually want to dress up as them when there were so many better options. Although, if done right, she supposed it could be fun.

Harry was still nodding and Ed started again: “Yes, we’re- wait, what?” He blinked a few times, confused. “Cosplaying?” he asked. A quick look at Harry’s face told him that his friend had no clue what that word meant either.

“Yes. Cosplaying. You know, dressing up as your favorite — or any character, looking at you — from, say, a book or movie. What you’re doing.” Well, maybe they weren’t familiar with the fandom and didn’t realize what they were setting themselves up for with their cosplay.

Ed and Harry exchanged more confused looks.

“No, we _are_ the Ghostfacers. We’re real. What do you mean, books and movies? Did our material get published?” Ed said and continued to ask Harry, “Did you hear back from any of the people we sent our videos and notes to?” Harry shook his head vigorously. He had sent many emails over the last few months, but hadn’t gotten a single reply. If someone had published something without including them in the profits, they would feel the Ghostfacers’ wrath soon.

The girl chuckled. “Well, you’ve got the roleplaying down perfectly, I see! The screams and running from non-existent threats back there were also very in-character,” she complimented them. “You would definitely have a good chance of winning the group cosplay act tomorrow, if you want to enter? That is, if you’re not assigned to anything at the time of the contest.

“Oh, and because you seem to be new to the Supernatural fandom, I just wanted to warn you. You are probably going to get a few unfriendly comments. Don’t take it personally, it’s just teasing. The Ghostfacers are simply perfect targets for a little mocking. Both for cosplayers who are in character and others who are not dressed up at all. When they see how accurate your portrayal is, they’ll have great respect for you!”

“Hey, Jen! Quit chatting and get back to work!” a male voice sounded from the other end of the room.

“Yes, Tom!” the girl, who was apparently called Jen, replied.

“Anyway, you’ll probably have to get back to work too so I don’t want to keep you for any longer. Just remember, that area-,” she pointed into the corridor where Ed and Harry had come from “…is off limits. I’m sure someone has told you that. You’re lucky Tom didn’t catch you. Or Becky.” That thought seemed to terrify her and she quickly turned around to keep setting up whatever she had been working on. “See you around, _Ghostfacers_ ,” she said to the two before turning her full attention to the stack of boxes next to her.

Ed and Harry were stunned by what Jen had said. Harry moved a little closer to Ed and started whispering. “So… Does that mean we’re in the Supernatural books? Did the Win-“

“How would I know?” Ed interrupted him, equally quiet. “You’re the one who found out about the books online.”

“Should we check?” Harry asked. “Let’s check.”

Ed nodded. “But first, let’s get out of here,” he added when he caught a suspicious glare from the guy who seemed to be responsible for making sure everyone was hard at work.


	5. Chapter 5

“Sam!” Dean’s voice roared through the hallway as he was quickly walking towards the main room of the bunker. Sam looked up from the book he was reading and saw Dean coming through the door with big strides.

“We’re going shopping. Cas needs clothes,” he announced. “And I’m gonna get myself a trenchcoat to wear to that convention, while we’re at it.” He grabbed his jacket from the chair it was hanging on.

“You’re going now?” Sam asked to clarify.

“Yeah. You coming with?” Dean replied and stopped to wait for his brother’s answer. Sam thought about it for a moment, but quickly came to a decision.

“Yeah, why not. I need a new pair of jeans anyway.” He closed the book and his laptop and got up, grabbing his own jacket from the chair beside him in the process.

Cas was already waiting for them in the garage. When Sam and Dean walked in, he turned around and Sam could see why Dean had decided to go shopping immediately. The clothes Cas was wearing were old clothes of Dean’s, that he hadn’t worn in a long time. The shirt fit Cas surprisingly well, but the jeans were more than just a little tight around the thighs. The trenchcoat did only a very poor job of concealing that fact.

While Sam was walking around the car to get to the passenger side, Dean paused, his hand on the driver’s door handle and his eyes examining Cas from head to toe. He hadn’t noticed before, but the former angel was awfully thin. The Fall and the loss of his grace must have taken a toll on him, both mentally and physically. Dean decided to take extra care that Cas was eating enough from now on.

“Is something the matter, Dean?” Cas wanted to know, after Dean was still eyeing him quietly after a few seconds.

“What?” Dean snapped out of his thoughts. “Oh, it’s nothing. What do you say, we’ll grab a bite to eat first, huh?” he suggested.

“But Dean, didn’t you just have breakfast?” Cas tilted his head to the side, quizzically.

“Yeah, but you haven’t.” Cas kept looking at him with a confused expression, squinting his eyes as if that would help him understand what Dean was thinking.

“Come on, get in the car,” Dean told Cas and turned to the car to do the same. Sam, who was already inside and hadn’t heard what the other two had been talking about, shot Dean a questioning look.

“We’re getting food, Cas is hungry,” Dean explained.

“Dean, that is not-,“ Cas started, but broke off when the hunter gave him a look that made clear that he would not accept a 'no’ on this matter.

“Yes, I suppose I am,” he corrected himself with a shaky voice that betrayed the meaning of his words. Dean gave a satisfied grunt and turned his focus back to the Impala. Sam just smirked to himself, but didn’t say anything else. He could imagine Dean’s reason for insisting on getting food for Cas. It was so typical for his brother to make up a reason that was so clearly an excuse, even if the real reason was a valid one. Especially when Cas was involved. Sooner or later he would have to admit how he felt, even if Sam had to make him.

Maybe he could get some of the fans at the convention to help him. They had wanted to see him and his brother as a couple, surely there were some who wanted to see Dean and Cas get together too, now that they knew about him. He just had to convince them that those two were the inspiration for the “fictional Cas and Dean”.

'One thing after the other,’ Sam thought.

First they were going to get clothes for Cas. Then he would worry about anything else.


	6. Chapter 6

At the diner, Cas had kept insisting that he would have enough with just a salad. After some arguing, Dean had finally taken matters into his own hand and ordered the biggest burger on the menu and two servings of garlic fries. He had kept one of the two servings for himself and given the other one and the burger to Cas, who had dutifully eaten as much of it as he could. Sam had ended up with Cas’ salad and Dean had eaten the left-overs of the burger.

“You can’t not finish a perfectly fine burger,” he had mumbled while struggling with the last few bites. He had then proceeded to get a piece of pie in a take-away box and they had finally gone to get clothes.

The shop they went to was almost empty, which was probably a good thing, because when Dean pointed at a pair of jeans that might fit Cas, the former angel started undressing right then and there.

“Woah, Cas. Stop!” Dean blared out when he saw Cas unzipping the trousers he was wearing.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked bewilderedly.

Cas stopped mid-movement and stared at Dean in confusion.

“You wanted me to try on the pair of jeans. From what I understand, this requires me to take off the pair I am wearing first,” Cas explained his actions.

“Not in the middle of the shop!” Dean looked around to see if anybody had seen or heard anything. Luckily, the only person in sight was an employee who was folding something a few aisles from them and didn’t seem to have paid attention.

“I don’t understand. Back in the bunker you seemed to have no problem with me changing in front of you,” Cas argued. Dean’s face turned as red as a beetroot, which only earned him an even more confused and slightly concerned look from Cas.

“Yeah, well, that was because it was in a private room. Anybody could just walk by here and see you standing around half-naked.”

Cas’s unchanged facial expression revealed that he was still no closer to identifying the issue.

“Just zip up your fly. I’m gonna show you the changing rooms. Maybe Sam has found you some shirts yet too.” Dean sighed and turned around to make his way to the other end of the shop.

Sam had indeed found a few potential tees and shirts — all of the shirts plaid, except for one — and was just making his way back to them when they passed by the shirt section. He immediately noticed the unusually red color of Dean’s face, but refrained from commenting after he noticed that Cas’s fly was not properly closed.

“There you go.” He handed Cas the shirts. “You can get all of those in a range of different colors and patterns, so we’ll just get a bunch of the ones that fit you.” Turning to face Dean, he added: “While the two of you are busy here, I’ll get a pair of jeans for myself and look for trenchcoats. I should be back when you’re done.”

“Thank you, Sam,” Cas said as he was taking a quick look at the shirts. They were nothing special. Not really. They looked exactly like the shirts Sam and Dean wore, but that just served to make Cas feel like he was finally a real part of their family.

Dean nodded to Sam as a quick sign of approval and acknowledgement.

“Ok, now, you just go in there and change there to see if the clothes fit. If you’re not sure, you come outside to ask me,” Dean explained when he and Cas reached the changing rooms. “Fully dressed!” he added for good measure. If it were up to him, he would accompany Cas and help him choose what fit best. After all, Cas had no experience in shopping for clothes. He might choose something that just barely fit him. That was, of course, the only reason Dean wanted to join Cas in the changing room. There wouldn’t be another reason. And anyway, it wasn’t such an unreasonable reason, right?

Right?

Ultimately though, Dean settled with staying outside and just asking Cas to come outside for a few of the shirts and trousers. There might not have been many people around, but those that were, might still have noticed that two guys were in one stall together. And then there was the possibility of Sam coming back any time. And he knew that he would never hear the end of it, if that happened.

Luckily, the choice of what to take and what not to take was an easy one, because a few pieces fit much better than the rest and so they were almost done by the time Sam came back. He was carrying the pair of jeans he’d been talking about and two trenchcoats.

“Two?” Dean asked when he saw them. “What’s the second one for?”

“The second one’s for me,” Sam replied and after seeing the questioning look on Dean’s face he elaborated: “After you suggested it, I thought it might actually be fun. At least a lot more than walking around in our normal clothes with everyone thinking we’re just pretending to be us.”

Dean nodded to himself and was just about to say something when Cas stepped out of the changing room again. He was wearing Dean’s clothes again, his trenchcoat in one hand and the fitting clothes in the other. Dean realized that he strangely liked the way his shirt looked on Cas. It reminded him a little of the times when a girl he had dated had worn his shirts in the mornings. Except that Cas was obviously nothing more than a friend. His best friend, but still just a friend. The thought he might be anything more than that was ridiculous. Cas wouldn’t even be interested in that.

Dean shook his head to clear his thoughts. Sam, who hadn’t failed to notice what had been written on his brother’s face so very clearly, smiled. Why couldn’t Dean at least admit his feelings to himself?

The three went to grab a couple of the shirts that fit and went to pay. Cas had put his trenchcoat back on as soon as he’d had his second hand free. It hadn’t felt right to carry it around without wearing it. Not after years of never taking it off. Cas had never grown particularly attached to his — no, Jimmy’s — black suit and blue tie. Maybe that was because he wasn’t the only angel who wore a suit and tie. In fact, many of his brothers and sisters chose that exact attire.

The trenchcoat however was _his_. It had meant nothing to him when he’d first come to earth and taken Jimmy’s vessel, but now it was more important to him than any words could describe. Not Enochian and not any of the humans’ languages. It represented his connection to Earth and to humanity. His connection to Dean. A connection that made seemingly impossible feats manageable. Not that impossible odds had ever stopped any Winchester.

Back in the Impala Sam and Dean were discussing the case, while Cas was sitting in the backseat, lost in thought and barely listening. On their way back to the bunker Sam alone noticed that Dean checked the rearview mirror much more frequently than normal.

They quickly dropped off most of Cas’ new clothing and grabbed some food for the road, and some of the weapons that they had lying in the bunker, and went on their way to the convention.


	7. Chapter 7

“Hey, Ed?”

“Hmm?” Ed was impatiently waiting and staring at the Horror movie section. Harry had insisted on going to the book store next to the old hospital to see if they had the Supernatural books there. Why he couldn’t just read them online when all of them had apparently been uploaded and made accessible for free, he couldn’t understand.

“Did you find another cheesy vampire love story?” he mocked his friend.

“No, I actually found it. Look!” Ed turned around and was promptly hit in the face by the book that Harry was triumphantly holding up in the air.

“I’m so sorry! But, see? This is about the first time we met them. Or they met us.”

“Let me see!” Ed snatched the book out of Harry’s hand and opened it. The first few pages were only about Sam and Dean, but when he opened the book somewhere in the middle, he was immediately met by his and Harry’s names.

“Those bastards,” he mumbled. “We have to read this and see what they wrote about us! And if it’s anything bad, they’re gonna see what happens when you mess with the Ghostfacers.”

“Hey, you two with the camera?” the voice of the cashier sounded from the counter. Ed and Harry turned to him simultaneously.

“If you wanna read that you better buy it first. There’s no reading it here and putting it back, you understand me?” Ed wanted to object, but the guy looked like he would win a fight with a bear. Better not to make him angry.

Teeth-gnashingly they paid for the book and returned to their trailer. Ed was mumbling something about getting a compensation from the Winchesters some time.

Back in the trailer Ed immediately started reading, despite Harry’s protests that he had been the one who had wanted that book. After a while he gave it a rest and settled with reading it online after all.

When Ed was about a third into the book, Harry suddenly shouted: “What?”

Ed jumped at the unexpected sound and almost dropped the book. He looked over to his friend and saw him staring at the laptop screen in shock. He moved closer and saw that Harry was looking at a Fan-Wiki page. The title on top of the page read 'Castiel’ and next to it was a drawing — fanart, most likely — of a black-haired guy in a trenchcoat.

“Wait, is that…” Ed started and Harry nodded slowly.

“That’s that thing we had in our garage. The translocating, opaque, spectral humanoid.”

“Well, here it says he’s an angel,” Harry interjected.

“Whatever he is, he’s in the books too?” Ed continued and Harry nodded again in response to his question. Ed looked over to the book he had left on his chair and back to the painting on the Wiki-site.

“Wait, this can’t be,” he exclaimed as he came to a realization.

“What?” Harry asked. Ed grabbed the book and slammed it shut to properly look at the cover.

“This is the book that this _Castiel_ showed us. Remember? It has the same font and cover art. No wonder he thought we were idiots. Those stupid Winchesters probably painted us in a completely wrong light to make themselves look good,” Ed went on a long rant to which Harry mainly nodded enthusiastically, with the occasional “Yes!” and “Totally!”.

“Once we’ve shown those _Supernatural_ fans that we’re the real heroes we’ll track down those losers and show them too!” Ed finally finished his speech and slumped back into his seat. Harry had stopped paying attention a few minutes before and kept nodding until he noticed the unusual silence. He looked at Ed, but his friend seemed to be deep in thought.

“Wanna get some food?” he asked after a look at the clock. Ed snapped out of his thoughts and just looked at Harry for a few moments, before realizing what he’d been asked.

“Oh, yeah. I’m starving. Professional ghosthunters need proper nourishment before a job, after all.”


	8. Chapter 8

Dean turned into the car park in front of the _Horizon Motel_ and felt a wave of sickness wash over him. He really shouldn’t be surprised, but even though he had expected it in a way, he was still not even close to prepared to see the probably 15 Impalas standing in front of the motel. Clearly, they were in the right place, that much was for certain.

He pulled into the first free parking lot and turned off the engine. At least the car on the left side of his baby was not an Impala, but a VW. The three got out of the car and walked to the reception. On the way there, Dean checked out some of the Impalas they were walking past. On the backseat of one of them, a beige speck caught his eye and he stepped closer. Just as he had thought, it was a trenchcoat. He should’ve known that others would dress up as Cas as well. He huffed disapprovingly.

“Looks like we weren’t the only ones with that idea,” he mumbled. “They could’ve at least gotten the right kind though. That one barely looks like the real one.” He turned to Cas and mustered the trenchcoat, as if to assure himself that he was right.

Sam looked over Dean’s shoulder to see what he meant. It had indeed a different design than the one Cas was wearing and the ones he and Dean had bought. This one only had three single buttons and had a built-in belt with a belt-buckle. It also had a few additional garnishments.

Dean shook his head and kept walking at a quick pace.

_Ding-a-ling_ , the bell above the door announced their arrival when Dean opened the door to the reception and stepped through. A relatively tall, chubby man — his name tag read “Rob” — turned around behind the counter to welcome them. As soon as he saw them his eyes lit up with joy and… recognition? They hadn’t met him on a case before, had they?

The man spread out his arms in a welcoming gesture. “Sam, Dean and Cas! Welcome, welcome. What can I do for you? We have one last three-bed room.” He leaned forward slightly and looked back and forth between Cas and Dean. “Or would you two rather have a double for yourselves?”

The reaction he got to this was not what he’d expected.

“How do you know our names?” Dean demanded to know, his hand slowly moving towards the gun on his waistband. The guy behind the counter was stunned by Dean’s perfect characterization. His tone of voice, his posture, his reaction, even the way he had looked at the Cas cosplayer. He must’ve already been in character to prepare for the convention the next day. And clearly that preparation was paying off.

Rob wasn’t going to do any cosplaying this time, because he wouldn’t be able to be there for very long. Damned responsibility of running the only motel in town. But he decided to still go along with “Dean”. A little roleplaying wouldn’t hurt.

“Who doesn’t know about the Winchesters and their angel? The hunters who stopped the apocalypse and freed the leviathans from purgatory. Oh, you have quite the reputation in hell,” he said.

“Sonofabitch,” Dean mumbled. “You’re a demon?” He had of course left his angel blade in the car, but Cas was hopefully still carrying his out of habit. Sam might have Ruby’s knife with him too, so he shot both of them a look saying 'be prepared to fight’. Not that either of them really needed a reminder, but better safe than sorry.

“That’s right. I have to say, I wasn’t expecting you to show up here, but I’m sure Crowley will be delighted when I bring him your heads. Who knows, I might even get a promotion.” Rob looked over to “Sam” and “Cas”. They had both not really done anything so far, but as far as he could tell they were also in-character. The Sam cosplayer was also doing a great job, the Cas cosplayer however seemed… too normal and passive. The Cas he knew from the books would’ve long ago gone on to protect his Dean from the potentially life-threatening demon. Anything to keep his Dean safe.

“Wait, what?” Dean was confused. He turned to Sam, who looked just as perplexed — always keeping the presumed demon in his line of sight. “We still have Crowley in our dungeon, right? Did you check before we left?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course I checked. I made sure all the sigils were still intact and the shackles were tightened. There’s no way he could’ve escaped.” Facing the motel owner he added: “Surely, hell must’ve realized by now that he is missing. What do you really want?”

Now it was Rob’s turn to be confused. He lowered his voice to indicate that he was talking out of character.

“The Winchesters kidnap Crowley? I’m sorry, I haven’t read the last two chapters yet, I didn’t know.”

All three hunters immediately relaxed and dropped their defense.

“You’re a- _You’re a fan?_ He’s a fan!” Dean exclaimed, his voice oozing with annoyance and loathing. “Is there not a single sensible person here?” He started angrily pacing the room in an effort to get rid of his aggressive energy. It took all his willpower not to introduce the guy’s face to his fist. The painful way.

Sam’s face reflected Dean’s feelings like a mirror, albeit a little more curved. Sam had always tended to put more effort in keeping his emotions under control. Unless it came to their dad, but that was another story. Cas was the only one who seemed neither angry nor annoyed. In fact, he didn’t even seem surprised.

“Cas, did you know that he wasn’t a demon?” Dean asked accusingly.

“Well, I wasn’t certain, but you and Sam told me that there would be people dressing and acting like us, I thought it was a strong possibility that this man was also just pretending. Especially, since one of the books is lying open on the table at the back there. He was most likely reading it when we came in.”

Sam and Dean looked at the spot that Cas was referring to and indeed, one of the books was lying there on the edge of the table. One corner was looking over the rim and a pen was indicating what page had most likely been open last.

Rob nodded. “I was. Well, I was fact-checking something I was discussing with a friend yesterday. Did you realize that Sam and Dean never actually found out that the Croatoan outbreak, back before they knew that Sam had demon blood, was actually a test from Azazel?”

“That wicked sonofabitch,” Dean cursed. “I wish I could’ve killed him in a more painful way.” Sam wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t known either, but it was exactly the kind of thing Azazel would do. Right along with surrounding him with his demons every step of his life. And it was right at the time when they were hunting him and when he was preparing all his 'special children’.

“Anyway, we’ll take the three-bed room, please,” Sam told the motel owner. “One night. We’ll pay cash.”

Rob was still a little confused, because 'Dean’ had not broken character after he had asked about the new chapters. Instead they had turned this into a meta-occurrence, like the one time Sam and Dean had gone to a convention in the books. It was irritating, but he didn’t want to ask them to break character when they were clearly doing their best to portray the characters as accurately as possible. Silently, he handed Sam the key with the number 17. Sam payed and they left the reception.

Dean, still agitated, immediately started marching into the direction of their room, when an annoyingly familiar van, partially hidden by Impalas, caught his eye. At the same time Sam groaned behind him. “Not again.”

They circled around the Impala nearest to them, so that they could get a clearer look at the vehicle. When Dean saw that there was light coming from the small window at the back, he stomped towards it and thrust open the door.

“Hey, Dean. Calm down,” Sam shouted after him, but Dean just ignored him.

Inside the trailer, Ed and Harry were sitting on their camping chairs. When the door was opened they both gave a jump and spun around to see who — or what? — it was.

“You,” Harry said with disgust.

“Yes, me,” Dean replied, his dislike of the two Ghostfacers equally showing in his voice. “What are you doing here? Oh, wait. I know. Get someone killed. Again.”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Harry protested.

“Oh no? Cause last time we met, that’s exactly what happened,” Dean practically shouted angrily. He still felt guilty for the poor kid’s death, as with all the other people he and Sam had failed to save. That was all the more reason why he couldn’t stand the Ghostfacers. They had been the reason why the kid had been in that haunted house in the first place. At least this time it looked like they hadn’t taken anyone with them.

“What happened with Corbett was a tragic incident, but it was not our fault,” Ed tuned in. “And I didn’t see _you_ have any luck saving him back then either, did you? Because according to this…,” he waved around with the book he was holding in his hand, “…you are some kind of heroes who save everyone. Talk about self-glorification, douchebags.”

“Listen, 'douchebags’. If we hadn’t been there, you’d _all_ be dead. A little gratitude would be nice.” By now Sam and Cas had caught up with Dean and Sam stepped beside him to be able to follow the conversation. Cas stayed behind the brothers. He didn’t have any issues with the Ghostfacers, other than that he thought they were incompetent and if he felt the need to chime in, he could always do that from where he was standing.

Sam took a look inside the trailer and immediately noticed the Supernatural book in Ed’s raised hand.

“You’re reading those too?” he asked in a clearly not amused tone.

Harry vigorously shook his head while Ed answered. “What? No! We just wanted to know how much about us is in there _without our permission._ This is horribly written, by the way. I am surprised there are any people reading this.”

“Yeah, well, I got news for you. We weren’t asked if we wanted this either. And we’re in every fucking book,” Dean snapped at him.

“You… What?” Harry was confused and looked at Ed in the hopes that he knew what was going on, with no luck. “What do you mean 'you weren’t asked’? Those books are crazy detailed. There’s no way someone could write that without being involved with your life,” Ed asked incredulously.

“There is if the author’s a prophet,” Sam explained.

“Woah, you have a prophet?” Harry’s eyes widened in disbelief as he was talking.

“Well, technically he’s a prophet of the lord,” Cas chimed in from behind Dean. As a former angel he still felt like it was his responsibility to correct someone if they got heavenly matters wrong. At the sound of Cas’ voice, Ed and Harry’s faces lost all color. Dean stepped to the side slightly, so that Cas could see into the trailer and the Ghostfacers could see who had spoken.

“And the books are actually called the Winchester gospels. Not that that’s of much significance.”

“You,” Harry whispered gravely.

Cas blinked and tilted his head questioningly. “I?”

Ed fumbled around behind his back without taking his eyes off the _thing_ in the trenchcoat. Finally, he pulled out a water pistol and pointed it at Cas. “What do you want?” he asked shakily.

Dean looked back and forth between the Ghostfacers and Cas, trying to figure out what their relation was. He glanced at Sam, but only got a clueless shrug from him.

“Do you know him?” Dean asked the Ghostfacers, then turned to Cas and asked him too. “Do they know you?”

“We have met before. I wanted to inform them about part of their fate. They screamed and sprayed water at me. I would hardly call that 'knowing each other’,” Cas outlined.

“We sprayed you with holy water. We thought you were a demon,” Ed defended.

“It was not holy water. And it smelled like roses,” Cas said.

In the meantime, Harry had slowly and cautiously moved a little closer to the trailer’s wall and begun frantically painting something, unaware that Sam had been watching him the whole time.

“That symbol goes on the other side of the circle,” Sam mumbled, annoyed at the Ghostfacers’ incompetence to do even the simplest research. Taken aback by Sam’s seemingly contextless remark, Dean turned to his brother to see what he was talking about. He followed Sam’s eyes to what he was watching.

“Seriously?” he muttered to himself and sighed, closing his eyes momentarily. When he opened them again he turned to Harry and proceeded to talk.

“Okay, first of all, that won’t work. Second of all, you need real blood for that. Not…” he took a step forward into the trailer and snatched the tube that Harry was working with from his hand. “…not _Star Power Horror Blood_. Really?!” He was looking from Harry to Ed and back as if he expected one of them to give him a reasonably explanation why they were using fake blood. Harry shrugged.

“It’s worth a try, right? Real blood is so… yucky. Ew.”

Dean’s face dropped and he looked to Sam with an expression that said “Can you believe this?”

Sam sighed. “Look, if you read somewhere that you have to use a certain ingredient, then you have to use that certain ingredient. Not a mix of cosmetic cremes, dyes and whatever else is in there. And don’t just take the first result on google. Check if it’s based on actual lore. Because that can make the difference between getting away alive or not.”

“Are you seriously explaining this to them?” Dean chimed in.

Sam raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “They’re idiots, but if that helps them stay alive…”

“Whatever.” Dean turned back to the Ghostfacers.

“Okay, listen. You don’t get in our way tomorrow and we’ll make sure nobody gets killed, Capisce? Good. Let’s go.” He turned around and walked away, leaving the van door wide open.

Cas was unsure if he should just follow Dean or if a goodbye to the two men in the trailer was in order, so he just gave a slight nod and left as well.

Sam told the Ghostfacers one more time “Don’t get yourselves killed” and followed Cas and his brother to their room.


	9. Chapter 9

The hustle and bustle at the convention was overwhelming. Sure, Sam and Dean had been to one before, but that had been the very first one and this… Well, this one was huge. Not only was the building they used much bigger, the number of fans and staff was also multiple times higher. As was the number of people in costumes. Most noteworthily, in trenchcoats.

As it had turned out, their idea to dress up as Cas, by wearing a trenchcoat, wasn’t only not a unique idea — as Dean had noticed the day before — it was, in fact, the exact opposite of original. While the first convention had had more Sams and Deans than bearable without going crazy, this one was bursting with Castiels. No matter where you looked, there were always at least ten trenchcoats in your line of sight.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Dean announced. He was desperately looking for a spot where he couldn’t see any trenchcoat-wearers, but he only seemed to find more and more of them.

Sam was only slightly more comfortable with the situation than his brother was, but he interestedly took a closer look at the crowd. As expected, he still found quite a few people dressed like him and his brother. What him surprised, however, was that there were also people dressed as Crowley, Ash, Bobby — the sight brought up tears, but he did his best to suppress them — and even Charlie.

“Why are they all dressed like me?” Cas asked beside him. Sam turned around and saw that his friend was squinting and confusedly looking around.

“Well, because they want to dress up as the characters from the books. It’s a way to show how much they like them. It’s part of their fan culture,” Sam explained.

“Yes, but why are most of them dressed as me? Why aren’t they dressed like you and Dean?“ Cas specified.

“Huh.” Sam looked around. He hadn’t actually thought about that before. “Maybe it’s because trenchcoats are easy to get and it’s a very distinctive look and easy to recognize,” he speculated.

“It’s because you’re awesome,” Dean chimed in and gave Cas a pat on the back. “Now let’s get in there, I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to.”

That was, of course, easier said than done. Everyone wanted to get in as fast as possible and someone ran into them almost constantly or stepped on their feet.

“Can’t they be a little more careful? It’s not like we’re so small that they can’t see us,” Dean mumbled grumpily after yet another collision.

“This is obviously a big deal to them. Would you be careful if this was a Bon Jovi concert?” Sam retaliated.

“Uh, yes I would,” Dean argued. Sam just snorted. Sure, Dean would be careful if he was at the back of the crowd, but if he had a chance at the front row…

“And how can you even compare this to a Bon Jovi concert? Those are masterpieces of art. This is…. An abomination,” Dean added.

After what felt like ages, they finally got to the entrance, where a girl wearing a hat like Bobby’s and a necklace with a pendant that looked like a vial of angelic grace stopped them. Scads of ribbons with laminated pieces of carton were hanging off one of her hands.

“Erm, sorry, but you can’t go in without a ticket,” she said shyly as she held out her free hand and stepped into their path. Dean looked her up and down and sighed.

“One of these?” he asked and pointed at the ribbons.

The girl nodded. “Well, one for each, but yeah.”

Grudgingly, Dean reached for his wallet. “How much?”

“Uhm… fifty.”

Dean raised an eyebrow at that. “Fifty for three tickets?” He opened his wallet and grabbed a fifty dollar note.

“No, it’s uhm… it’s fifty for each,” the girl clarified. She seemed to get smaller and smaller with each word and barely even dared to look the three in the eyes. Clearly she was scared by their stature and demeanor.

“Fifty bucks for one ticket?” Dean burst out. “You’ve got to be kidding me! For this nonsense? No way.”

“Dean,” Sam nudged him slightly. Dean turned around and looked at his brother.

“What, do you wanna pay 150 bucks for this?”

“No, of course not. But…” Sam nodded to the girl. Dean followed his gesture and realized what he wanted to tell him. The girl was looking at himor them — as if she thought they might just run her into the floor any second.

“Okay, look…” Dean started in a much softer tone. “I didn’t mean to be rude or harsh. We’re not really fans…”

“We’re friends with the author, Chu- err… Carver Edlund,” Sam interrupted him. “And we were invited by one of the organizers. Becky Rosen, if you know her?”

“Yeah, in fact she pretty much insisted. We wouldn’t be here voluntarily, trust me,” Dean added. At the mention of Becky’s name the girl got even paler than she already was.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you through without a ticket. My supervisor might kill me if I do,” she mumbled. “Not that I don’t believe you, I do!” she assured them, though it wasn’t clear if she really meant it or if she was trying to tell them what they wanted to hear.

“Okay, well, what now?” Dean asked. “I’m not paying 150 dollars to get in and I’m not going back through that crowd,” he complained. “Any suggestions?”

“I really can’t let you in…”

“Sam! Dean!” a very loud and painfully familiar voice shouted from inside the building. “Wait, is that Cas?” Becky wrestled through the crowd of people entering the convention and nearly ran towards them. The question was a little confusing for most of the con-guests, since almost 80% were dressed in trenchcoats, but hardly anyone gave her more than a moment’s attention.

When she finally got to the door she stopped in front of the trio and stared at them, almost glowing.

“I am so glad you could make it! I know you guys are super busy, but this whole thing was rather spontaneous, so we couldn’t do all the proper background checks and we got this place for an amazing price, because the owner’s daughter is a fan and managed to convince him. I mean, can you believe it? It’s huge and it’s a real historically haunted house. Well, it’s not supposed to be haunted anymore, now that they’ve done lots of renovations and removed most of the old furniture and all the nasty identifiable stuff. In most of the building anyway. Did you know that they found bones in the basement? And a lot of them. Human bones and animal bones. I made them burn them, of course, don’t worry. And…”

“Woah, woah, Becky. Breathe. We did our research, we don’t need you to tell us all this,” Sam interrupted her, earning himself a very grateful look from Dean.

“Oh, yes of course. How stupid of me. Of course, you’ve already done all the research you could possibly need. Sam Winchester would never come to a job unprepared.”

“Uhm, sorry?” the girl with the tickets made herself noticed.

Becky turned around and looked at the girl as if she had just interrupted a meeting of world leaders.

“They don’t have tickets, but they refuse to pay, saying that you invited them…,” the girl was not sure how to put this without it sounding either completely unreasonable or offensive.

“Of course I invited them. How could you just let them stand here and wait, for no reason? You really can’t rely on anyone these days.”

The girl would’ve liked to confirm that those three guys could really enter without a ticket, but she was scared Becky might harangue her again. Her supervisor would hopefully see that it was Becky who actually let them in.

“Okay, come on with me, guys. I have so much to show you!” Becky announced and started walking back into the building.

“Let’s start in the basement. This is amazing, I’m telling you guys. We built an almost exact replica of the inside of the old haunted Murdecai house. Without the tulpa symbol, of course, we don’t want to repeat that story again, right? Although I bet you would save us all with ease.” Becky trudged down the nearest staircase, above which a sign was hanging with the inscription 'Mordecai Murdoch’s hell house!’

At the bottom of the stairs was a small room with one door, that was painted roughly like the outside of the entrance door of said house. A large sign was standing next to it, warning people to enter at their own risk.

“Drama much?” Dean whispered to Cas and Sam.

Cheerfully, Becky opened the door and walked through, waving the other three to do the same. The door had hardly fallen shut behind them, when a large dark figure with an axe seemed to appear at one wall and started to quickly move toward them.

Becky gave a jump and just barely managed not to scream, while Dean and Sam grabbed the extendable iron rods that they were hiding in their jacket. They would’ve liked to bring shotguns, but that was probably against convention rules and they couldn’t very well hide them under their clothes.

A moment later, Becky exhaled in relief.

“Larry, the house is not even officially open yet. You can’t just go and scare staff or guests when they’re walking through,” she scolded the guy under the costume that, as they now discovered, was a Mordecai costume. “Not that I’m saying you’re scared, that would be ridiculous,” she added facing Sam, Dean and Cas.

Sam and Dean visibly relaxed as they put their makeshift weapons away.

“I’m sorry, Becky. I don’t have a watch or a working clock down here. With all the noise from upstairs, I thought it was time already,” Larry apologized, muffled by his mask.

“Well, next time check if the person coming in has one of these,” Becky dangled her staff ID in front of where Larry’s eyes probably were. “Now go back to your position.”

She turned back to the three hunters. “So, what do you think?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer continued: “I know it probably doesn’t look exactly like the real thing, because obviously we couldn’t check it out ourselves, since you burnt it down. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, because you saved so many lives through that, but that’s why some of the details might look a bit different from the real house…”

Sam and Dean were hardly listening and instead looked around the remade haunted house. It was an eery feeling to be here after such a long time, even if it wasn’t really the same house. Or even in the same state. Cas looked around the room all the same, but for different reasons. He had had an eye on the Winchesters even before they had met for the first time. All angels knew of the Winchester gospels — or at least almost all of them — and Cas had always felt the need to keep an eye on them, even if he hadn’t been allowed to do anything.

This room was part of their history. It had only been one hunt of many, but all of them had made those two brothers who they were. Cas drew in the sight of every detail. Maybe he could learn from this as well, even if it was no actual haunted house. He wanted to be of help. Now that he was powerless, he would have to work all the harder to become a great hunter. Dean believed in him. Cas would do his best not to disappoint him.

“Okay, come on guys, you’re really going to like the next thing I’m going to show you!” Becky promptly turned around and disappeared into the back part of the rebuilt house. Sam and Dean looked at each other with expressions that revealed that they were far from confident that they would actually like whatever 'the next thing’ was.

A little hesitantly they followed her into the even more dimly lit back and finally through another door back to the rest of the convention. There weren’t too many people around, but they were probably not in one of the main areas.

“So, obviously we have a stage again, which is where most of the events will take place. We’re having a few cosplay contests. You guys would have a great chance, although, I suppose technically you should win by default, since everybody else is just imitating you and people — or creatures — you know. But it’s not like I can tell anyone. Nobody would believe me anyway. Oh, and we have another treasure hunt. We don’t always have one, but with this great venue I just had to. We have a few people who are dressed up as ghosts, so take care not to shoot them. “ Becky took a right turn into a rather small corridor and then opened the first door on her left for the boys to step through.

“Welcome to the artist’s alley!” she announced.

Sam, Dean and Cas walked into the large room stretching out behind the door. It was already filled with fairly many people, partially because a lot of them were apparently running stands where they sold drawings and other fan-designed accessories. With all the people and the make-shift stands it wasn’t apparent at first sight, but after a short minute, Cas was the first to notice why Becky had thought they would like this.

“This room roughly looks like the main room of the bunker,” he stated with furrowed brows.

Surprised, Sam and Dean took their eyes off the crowd and examined the room and decoration closer. It was nowhere near as close to their actual home as the Murdoch house was to the actual site, but it was clear what they had wanted to rebuild here. The walls were covered in bookshelves, which were filled with old tomes. Well, most — if not all — of them were probably just empty cardboard covers and just put there to fill the shelves. There was some wooden retro-style furniture. Not the exact design as the real ones, but it conveyed the same sense of being from another era. There even was a fake katana on one of the dressers.

Becky stepped out from behind them and watched their reactions tentatively. “So, what do you think? I know, it’s probably not perfect, but Chuck just wouldn’t cooperate, so we had to solely work off the descriptions from the books. Not an easy task, let me tell you.”

“Honestly? This is weird. I mean, this is where we live. Seeing it rebuilt like in a museum…” Dean started, “…it’s unsettling.”

“What?” Becky couldn’t believe what Dean was saying. “But, I thought this would make you feel at home. It is your home, after all, isn’t it?”

“ _This_ is not our home. This is just some room in a haunted house that _you_ made to look as much as our home as you could. I mean, how would _you_ feel if _your_ home was rebuilt somewhere?”

Becky seemed — unbelievably — to be lost for words.

“Look,” Sam said. “We get that all of this is a huge deal for you and… the other fans. It’s just, it’s somewhat strange and uncomfortable to have our lives exposed in this way. Not that it’s anyone’s fault, except maybe Chuck’s, but there’s a reason why we try to stay out of this and why we actually told Chuck not to publish any more stories.”

“But…,” Becky tried to say something, but Dean interrupted her.

“We’re really just here because of the haunting. Because _you_ managed to pick an incredibly haunted building and we have to make sure nobody dies. Speaking of, we’re going to need access to _all_ sections and areas, including staff areas and whatnot.”

“Oh, yes, of course. How stupid of me, I got these for you…” Becky rumbled through her jacket’s pockets, which seemed to be much larger than they looked, and pulled out six ribbons with cards attached to them.

“I have a VIP pass and a press pass for each of you, that will give you access to any place you might need to go to. I didn’t know that Cas was coming too, but luckily I got some for him too.” She stared at the former angel in awe.

“I still can’t believe I get to meet you in person. I mean, an actual angel of the lord. And the best friend of the best hunter in the world. And of course, the erm…,” she stopped herself in the middle of the sentence and nervously looked back and forth between Cas and Dean. “Anyway…,” she continued after a few seconds of silence. “Do you want me to show you around the rest of the convention? I mean, this is the biggest one yet and there are so many more exciting things and events — have I told you about this year’s treasure hunt yet? Oh, it’s-“

“Erm, thank you, Becky, but I’m sure we’ll be fine on our own. Don’t you have something to do yourself? I mean, you are basically running the convention, right?” Sam stopped her before she could start another explanation that would undoubtedly last for at least 15 minutes.

Becky’s eyes widened in realization. “Yes, of course! I wanted to organize for the rest of the tickets to be brought to the entrance. Oh, I hope they haven’t run out of tickets yet. See you later, guys. Keep me updated and let me know if you need anything at all.” She turned around and ran out of the room.

Sam and Dean exhaled loudly with relief, while Cas just stared at the spot she had disappeared from. “She talks fast. Is that normal?” he asked confusedly.

“Nothing about Becky is normal,” Dean muttered. “I’m just looking forward to getting out of here and hopefully never having to see her again.”

Sam looked at him sharply, to make him realize how rude that was, but he couldn’t keep the expression up for very long. He felt the exact same way.

“Yeah, let’s just try to get this over with as soon as possible,” he mumbled.

The three hunters slipped the ribbons with the “VIP” badges over their heads and started to walk towards where they thought the older and unrestored part of the building was. The first thing they had to do was to find out if the building was actually haunted. And where better to do that than there.

It took them a few wrong turns and very disturbing run-ins with cosplayers that had managed to get the costumes of some monster or someone they knew absolutely perfect, but they had finally found a sign saying 'no entry — end of con’ at the end of a hallway. They made sure nobody was watching them, just to be safe, and walked around the corner.

Sam and Dean pulled out their EMF meters and turned them on, while Cas stayed behind them and watched curiously.

They walked a little further and soon the EMF’s sounded with the familiar bleeping. At first it was just a silent and occasional beep, but the noise grew louder and more and more constant the further they walked. Dean put his EMF back into his jacket pocket and grabbed his iron rod instead. He turned to Cas for a quick check and signed him to do the same.

Sam grabbed his EMF meter with the left hand and took some salt capsules out of his pocket with the right. They had found them in the bunker only a few days earlier. According to the records, the capsules were supposed to burst when they touched a ghost and distribute the salt inside them over a radius of 5 feet, forcing any ghosts within that radius to vanish. He just hoped they worked.

They didn’t have to wait for very long to feel the expected chill and to start seeing their breath condense in clouds in front of their faces. Dean and Cas gripped their iron rods tighter, and Sam got ready to throw one of the salt capsules.

A sudden, strong gust of wind shook the windows and doors and caused some rattling in one of the rooms bordering on the hallway. All three of the hunters spun around to see where the noise had come from. In that moment, a faint silhouette materialized at the edge of their vision with a flicker. It only remained there for the blink of an eye until it flickered out of existence again, before anyone could even react. Slowly, Dean turned back around while nodding to Sam that he should keep facing the other way, so that they could keep an eye out in all directions. Cas followed their example and turned to face the part of the hallway that they had come from.

With another short flash, the ghost flickered into existence again, a little further away this time. Dean was the first one who saw it. It was a woman who looked like she was in her fifties. Her hair resembled those of a broom and she was wearing a hospital gown so ripped up, it was hard to even recognize if she was a patient or a doctor. The former was however much more likely, considering the time in which the hospital had been in operation.

Dean raised the iron rod, ready to swing it should she try to get near them.

“Sam,” he called out. His brother turned around and as soon as he spotted the woman, he threw one of the salt capsules. To his relief, the capsule worked. As soon as it came into contact with the ghost, the sphere burst and in an instant, the air around it was filled with a cloud of fine salt crystals. The woman just managed to open her mouth as if to scream or say something, but then disintegrated within moments after being exposed to the salt.

Tense, Sam and Dean watched the spot where the ghost had just been. Cas had turned around too and now looked around in case another ghost would show up somewhere else. Very slowly, the fine salt dust settled, but instead of forming a thin film on the ground, it seemed to shine in the dim light like little stars and disappeared as soon as it touched the ground. It was deathly quiet, with the exception of the ruffle of Cas’ coat, as he was turning and stepping from one foot to the other.

“Well, seems like these things do work,” Sam remarked and threw a few of the salt capsules to Dean and Cas. Dean put his into his jacket pocket and continued walking further into the building, his iron rod raised.

They didn’t have to wait for very long until the ghost showed up again. When they were halfway through the corridor they were in at the time, they saw a light flash at the other end and with a flicker, the woman reappeared. Too far to throw a capsule, and even more so to attack with the iron rods, the hunters stopped.

They were unsure if they should keep walking towards her or turn back. Either way, they had to be careful and stay attentive. She could cross the distance in a split second, so they couldn’t afford to lower their guard.

Dean glanced at Cas and his brother and then nodded to keep walking forward. As they slowly neared the ghost, they managed to recognize large scarred areas on every part of her body. Her eyes seemed to stare at nothing and they were strangely clouded. Well, as much as you could judge that in a ghost.

They were only another twenty feet from the end of the hallway, when the silhouette of the woman started flickering again and she started moving in their direction.

Dean adjusted his grip on the rod in his hands again and Sam got ready to throw another salt capsule.

“Wait,” Cas stopped them before either one could start an attack. “I think she wants to tell us something. I don’t think she has violent intentions.” The two brothers paused in their movements and looked the woman up and down.

It was true that she didn’t seem to want to attack or hurt them, but you could never be sure with ghosts. Their intentions could seemingly change as fast as they could move from one spot to another. Trying to listen to a ghost was usually not worth the risk.

Dean glanced at Cas and upon seeing how confident the former angel seemed in his opinion, he decided to give it a shot. Slowly, he slightly lowered his iron rod and took on a less threatening stance.

“Look… Lady, we won’t hurt you if you don’t try to hurt us,” Dean tried to reason with the ghost. Undeterred, the woman kept moving toward them. Not that Dean had had awfully high hopes that reasoning would work. She was a ghost after all. They weren’t known to be great talkers, in most cases.

“We just want to know who here abducts, hurts and kills people, and we’ll be on our way. We might even send you to a better place, if you can tell us who you are. How does that sound?” he continued warily. The ghost still showed no reaction and Dean started to tense up a bit. It was so close now, they could see areas of scar tissue all over her face and a few on her right arm.

Sam nodded to the scar tissue and glanced to Dean and Cas. “She must be one of the patients they did the experiments on.”

At the sound of the word “experiments”, the woman abruptly stopped, her eyes widening. She opened her mouth and started whispering unintelligible words. It sounded like a foreign language, but not a language either of the three had heard before. Or at least they couldn’t identify it. They started to believe more and more that the woman was indeed not violent and not intent on attacking them, but they still didn’t dare approach her on their own account.

“You know if they had any foreigners or immigrants in this hospital?” Dean muttered to Sam. The younger brother shrugged, a doubtful expression painted across his face.

“I think it’s more likely that the message just isn’t getting through the veil properly,” he replied.

Sam and Dean stood there, unmoving, for a little while longer, while the woman kept muttering unintelligible words. Cas on the other hand stepped forward and started to approach the ghost. They had determined that she was not violent, so why shouldn’t he get closer, right?

When Cas passed Dean, his open coat brushing against Deans tense arm, the hunter grabbed his best friend’s arm and held him back.

“Cas, what are you doing?” he whispered sharply. “This is dangerous.”

Cas turned his head a little to look into Dean’s worry-filled eyes. The hunter might put on a devil-may-care attitude more often than not, but he did care very deeply about his family. He even cared about strangers, even though he would probably never admit it.

“Let go of me, Dean. I know what I’m doing. After all, we figured out that this woman’s ghost is not violent, so it should be safe to approach her. Maybe I can get some useful information from her.” Dean and Cas locked eyes for a moment longer. It was almost as if a small discussion was going on between them, that neither they nor anybody else could hear, but finally, albeit very reluctantly, Dean slowly let Cas’ arm go.

Cas slowly bridged the remaining distance and stopped so close to the ghost, it even looked uncomfortable to the brothers. The woman seemed to flicker more, now that Cas was so close to her, but the unintelligible stream of whispered words continued to flow out of her mouth without a hitch.

Cas took a breath and started to talk in a loud but gentle voice.

“Miss? I don’t mean to disturb you…”

To everyone’s surprise, the woman stopped flickering and her gaze, that had been directed at nothing in particular until now, seemed to focus, as if a veil had been lifted from her eyes.

“Miss…,” she sighed toneless. “No one has referred to me like that in… oh, it must be at least 50 years now.” She let her eyes wander a bit, briefly passing over Sam and Dean until they landed on Cas, no more than a feet in front of her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said softly and continued much firmer: “Leave. Leave now, before he finds out.”

“Who is _he_?” Sam asked.

“Go! He sees everything. He will be here soon and he will not let you leave,” she got louder and more upset with every word, her voice echoing from the back of the narrow hallway.

“Can you tell us who he is? We might be able to help you,” Cas tried this time. It was a small change that the ghost lady would really help them, but at the moment it was the best lead they had.

Contrary to expectations, however, the woman’s eyes just widened.

“Help,” she voiced breathlessly. “He said he was helping me… I don’t want your help. No. No! Leave!” almost shouting now, the woman started flickering again and slowly moved backwards. After a few feet she stopped for a moment and then abruptly turned to her left and disappeared through one of the closed doors.

“So much for getting her to help us,” Dean grumbled. Nodding to the door and then letting his eyes move back and forth between Sam and Cas he suggested: “How about we see where she escaped to?”

In silent agreement the two followed Dean. To everyone’s surprise, the door wasn’t locked. In fact, the lock was not only broken, the rust covering the door handle and lock had done such a good job at degrading the metal that a light tap with one finger would have been enough to push through the latch.

The room behind the door was pitch dark, with the exception of the light now falling through the open door. It was hard to tell exactly, but the room seemed to be huge. More a hall than a room.

Sam and Dean pulled out their phones to use as flashlights. The floor was littered with sheets of paper, some of them empty, some of them filled with notes from an old typewriter. Stacks of old wooden chairs lined the walls, an astonishing number of them still intact.

There were four more doors leading out of the room — or hall — other than the one they had come in through.

“Well, where to now?” Dean voiced what everyone was thinking.

Sam used his phone’s flashlight to shine a light on the floor in front of each of the doors, but there was no clue where the ghost might have gone. No drag-marks across the room from previous victims, no blood, no path of clear floor, where the air draft ghosts sometimes produced had wafted the pieces of paper away.

Sam slowly walked up to the nearest door, careful not to slip on the paper. Like with the other door, the lock was completely rusted through and opening it was a simple matter of giving it a firm push.

The room that opened up before Sam was a stark contrast to the hall it was bordering on. In fact, it was hardly even a room. The wall opposite of the door was barely three feet away and perfectly fitted with a long row of shelves. The room seemed to stretch out from one end of the dining hall to the other, all the while never gaining in depth.

“This must’ve been some kind of storage room,” Sam mumbled, then turned around, signing Dean and Cas that it was a dead end. Two of the other doors were on the same wall as the one Sam had opened and presumably lead to the exact same storage room. That left only one more door.

The three hunters crossed the room and opened the door. As soon as they stepped through, a pungent smell of moldered books and death wafted into their noses.

“Ugh, yuck!” Dean exclaimed, pressing his left sleeve against mouth and nose to keep out at least some of the smell. He let the light from his phone wander across the room and found the source. At least twenty cages full of small, rotted animal bodies, probably mice or rats.

“There,” Dean said to point Sam and Cas to the cages. “At least it’s not human corpses.”

Apart from the practical wall of cages, the room also held a large wooden desk with a dusty typewriter and a few large chests, shelves and cupboards.

“This must have been where the doctors who carried out the experiments wrote their reports and kept their records,” Cas spoke up. Sam and Dean stopped their search for helpful clues and turned to look at Cas, who seemed to be reading the half-written document still fastened in the typewriter.

“This is a report of what they did to their 68th patient, Rosa Mendeley. It is incredibly detailed and… gruesome.” Cas squinted as he continued reading, while Dean had taken to flipping through the documents on the desk, lying next to the typewriter, slowly at first, then faster and faster as he realized something.

“Sam, Cas, look at this,” he said and tossed a stack of papers to each of the two. “The signature is always the same one. This was all just done by one guy. Matthew Smithson. Torturing, what…,” he paused and peeked at the report clipped into the typewriter. “… _68_ patients. What a sicko.”

' _Clang!_ ’ came a loud sound from the direction of the hallway which they had come in. Their iron rods ready and their phone-flashlights raised to shine out as much area as possible, they quietly went back to the big hall and towards the open door on the other side. They didn’t have to wait long before the air temperature suddenly dropped to sub-zero degrees and their lights started flickering.

Only moments later, a ghost flickered into existence, about halfway on their way back to the corridor. This time however, it was a different one and its intentions were unmistakable. Standing before the three hunters was the form of a tall man, so skinny you could see his bones even through the hospital gown. He had scars and deep, open wounds all over his face and a large stain of blood as red and dark as wine stained his shirt above his abdomen.

Most importantly, however, he held a large, bloodstained scalper in his right hand and fixated the three hunters with a gaze that could not mean anything good.

The ghost looked back and forth between the three figures in front of it and then finally stopped, its eyes fixed on Dean.

Another flicker and it was standing right in front of Dean, right arm raised, the scalpel only inches from Dean’s face. The hunter, already expecting something like this, immediately took a step backwards while at the same time swinging his iron rod at the incorporeal figure in front of him. The ghost vanished before the weapon could touch it and instantly reappeared behind Dean.

“Dean, behind you!” Cas shouted, just a tad too far away to take a swing of his own right then, while Sam rummaged through the pockets of his jacket, trying to grab another one of these salt capsules.

Upon hearing Cas shout his name, Dean promptly turned around and lunged out with the hand holding the iron rod, in an attempt to build up momentum. He was however too slow and before he was even fully facing the ghost again, an invisible force slammed into him and catapulted him across the hall.

Cas had by now gotten close enough to take a swing at the ghost, and so he did, the iron rod passing cleanly through the former patient, making it disappear with a loud hissing sound. But it wasn’t gone for long. Dean had just managed to get back up and into a stable position, when the ghost, who seemed to have taken a liking to Dean in particular, reappeared a few feet away from the oldest hunter. This time, with Dean’s back to the wall, the ghost either couldn’t attack him from behind or simply wasn’t aware that it could, but either way, Dean was able to concentrate only on what was in front of him, making his defense a lot easier.

Cautiously, but as fast as they would dare, Sam and Cas sprinted across the paper-littered hall to get to their brother and dear friend. When they were closing in and the ghost realized that it was about to be attacked from another side, it teleported past the nearing two hunters, to once again stand behind them. This time it went to attack Sam, but just when it appeared mere inches from his chosen prey, the hunter threw the sphere in his left hand practically into the ghost, while backing away as quickly as he could.

The sphere burst, but instead of a fine dust of salt, the air started to shimmer and what looked like a tube of dust formed around the ghost, slowly settling into a ring of salt. The ghost was trapped.

Angrily, it tried to break out of the circle multiple times, only to be thrown back into the centre every time. It finally realized that there was no getting out, when it got its scalpel knocked out of its hand and settled with staring at the three hunters, fuming with anger and frustration.

Dean raised his eyebrows and gave Sam a look of surprise and slight amusement.

“Not bad. Who’da thought trapping a ghost could be this easy… those pokéballs.”

“Are you alright, Dean?” Cas spoke up and when the hunter turned his head, he found a concerned look on the face of his trenchcoat angel.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Dean replied without missing a beat. Truth be told, his back hurt like hell. The ghost had thrown him pretty forcefully, even for a ghost, but he shouldn’t have gotten any serious injuries. No need to worry anymore.

“Well, it’s safe to say the stories of multiple hauntings here are true,” Sam commented.

“You don’t say,” Dean mumbled. “How did this sphere trap the ghost, when the first one only repelled it anyway?”

Sam fished a couple of them out of his pocket and took a closer look at them. “Huh. I think there are two different kinds. See…” He threw two of them to his brother. “Some of them have an empty black circle printed on them, while others have the circle filled out.”

Dean raised his eyebrows in an impressed expression. “Dandy! Those old coots had a few nice tricks up their sleeves.” He stuck the two spheres into his pocket, turned to take a quick look at Cas, making sure his favorite fallen angel was alright and then focused his attention back on the trapped ghost.

“So, how many do you figure we’ll have to deal with?” he asked.

“Well, some reports had numbers up to thirty, but I doubt that it’s really that many. If we go off the numbers of patients that were subjected to those experiments, however, we shouldtechnically have… sixty-eight?” Sam said, looking at Cas with a quizzical look, who confirmed the number with a slight nod.

“Awesome,” Dean sighed. “How many of these-,” he started, but stopped himself when he heard noise from the hallway. He readied his iron rod and got into a fighting stance, while Sam took a few steps back to stand behind the door, ready to ambush whatever would come through.

_Clash_  
The sound of something falling to the ground sounded through the hallway, followed by furious whispering and fast footsteps.

“There!” a slightly familiar voice whispered and only moments later, the figures of two camera-holding ghost-stalkers stumbled through the door.

Ed, who was in the front, saw the ghost and Dean and Cas as soon as he stepped through the door and stopped immediately. “You,” he said in an accusing tone and scowled. He looked like he was about to say more, but he never got to it.

Harry, whose line of sight was blocked by Ed, forcefully bumped into his friend, sending them both flying, sliding and slipping over the sea of papers and right into the ring of salt trapping the ghost. The eyes of the two widened as they realized that they had just broken the circle keeping the ghost from attacking anyone.

Surprisingly, the ghost did no such thing. Instead, he just disappeared.

The three hunters visibly relaxed. “Great. That’s just great. It’s you two. Again,” Dean said, his voice oozing with sarcasm. “And you just had to destroy the salt ring and set a violent ghost free.”

“Hey, how could we have known that you had a ghost trapped right behind that door?” Ed complained. “You’re at least as much to blame as we are!”

“Yeah? Well, I clearly remember telling you to stay out of this, so fuck you!” Dean retorted.

Harry and Ed quickly got back on their feet, this time paying a lot more attention to the paper blanket beneath them. They checked their cameras, but luckily the nothing was broken.

“So now what?“ Harry asked. Dean shook his head in annoyance, not wanting to admit that he had just been about to ask the same question, only to his brother. Instead he turned his head slightly to Sam, so to not have his face directly in the line of sight of the two Ghostfacers, and raised a questioning eyebrow.  
“Well, if we want to get rid of the ghosts here, we are going to have to figure out who they are. And hope that their bodies aren’t too hard to find,“ Sam mumbled.

Dean sighed. “So, research. Awesome. Well, let’s get going and get it over with.“

“And you two,“ he directed at Ed and Harry. “I’m just going to tell you one last time. Leave this to the professionals, yeah? Oh, and go get a job, you’re never going to make money with this.“ Ed grumbled something in response, but it was too quiet and too unintelligible for anyone except Harry to understand.

The unusual group left the hall, Ed and Harry slightly trailing behind, still filming, when the temperature suddenly dropped again. Dean and Cas readied their iron rods, and in quick succession, six or seven ghosts appeared in the hallway only a few feet before them. Interestingly, every patient seemed to wear a slightly different gown. Some had vertical stripes, some horizontal stripes. One of them had a simple, single-colored, dark blue gown, while everybody else had two or more colors in their patterns.

The ghost standing at the front of the crowd was the one they had trapped in the big hall, but the woman that had tried to warn them earlier was not among them.

“Looks like we’re going to have to fight our way out of here.“ Dean nodded to Cas, to make sure he was ready. His unasked question was answered without doubt by the determined, almost eager expression in the former angel’s eyes. Sam had now also taken out his iron rod. Against a crowd of ghosts it was probably more effective, and he had a lot more experience with it.

Before any of the ghosts could make a move, Dean charged forward and swung a wide blow, passing through the closest two ghosts and disintegrating them. It would merely take them a moment to reappear a few feet away from where they’d stood, of course, but he knew that Cas and his brother would have his back in case a ghost would try to attack him from behind. Cas made a few swing at ghosts as well, though seeing how energetically and efficiently Dean held his own against their opponents, he couldn’t help being slightly distracted. He still felt out of place. Anyone observing them could see that Sam and Dean were a well-oiled machine, and Cas… Well, in Cas’ eyes, he was not being helpful, because, truth be told, the Winchester brothers hardly needed help against a couple of ghosts. He was probably more of a liability. He didn’t have a lot of experience with going face to face with ghosts, even less so with the possibility of getting hurt by one.

 

While fighting seven ghosts as essentially a group of three wasn’t exactly like taking candy from a baby, they were slowly getting closer to the exit. The ghosts didn’t seem to be very powerful. Ed and Harry mostly stayed behind the three hunters, only occasionally throwing some salt onto a ghost that happened to reappear a few feet behind the group. Sam was somewhat looking out for them, making sure that any ghosts in his vicinity that might attack them didn’t get the chance to, and Ed and Harry were very grateful, even though none of the three would admit to any of it.

Dean and Cas rounded a corner and could finally hear voices from the convention and see signs of life, when the ghosts suddenly stopped attacking, flickering wildly and moving away from the hunters. Cas squinted and stared at the ghosts, as if they might tell him what was going on, while Dean looked around warily, trying to find the cause of the sudden change in behavior.

“Erm… Sam? Dean?“ Harry’s voice came from behind them. The three hunters turned around and immediately understood why the patients had let up on them. Further down the hallway they had come from, they could see another ghost, but this one wasn’t wearing a hospital gown. He was wearing a coat that probably used to be white, but was now a dirty yellow and splattered with blood from top to bottom. In his right hand he held a large knife, in his left a small thing that they couldn’t make out from the distance, but it was probably nothing good.

The ghost flickered and without further warning, the doctor was standing right in front of them. Without hesitation, he attacked the person closest to him, which happened to be Harry. The Ghostfacer was frozen from shock, but Ed managed to pull him aside just in time. Swiftly, the ghost followed their movement and made another strike, this time, directed to hit both Harry and Ed. Ed managed to dive away, but Harry was only saved by Sam wildly swinging his iron rod right through the ghost. Virtually instantly, the ghost reappeared just two feet further away from his attacker, again right in front of the two Ghostfacers. Already seeing the death of those two idiots before his eyes, Dean grabbed them by their jackets and shoved them behind himself and Cas.

The ghost doctor, who had already lunged out for his next strike paused and seemed to furiously look back and forth between Dean, Cas and Sam. Dean quickly swung at him, causing him to reappear a little further back in the hallway.

“Go, go, go!“ Dean shouted at the others, gesturing to run back towards the convention. Ed and Harry didn’t need to be told twice, they were already running at Dean’s first 'go'. Sam, Cas and Dean backed away as fast as they dared, while still keeping an eye on the ghost, which turned out to be a good thing. After only a few more seconds, the doctor started attacking again. His blows weren’t quite as fast, and some of them didn’t even seem to be directed at anyone specific. Almost as if he couldn’t decide which of the three he should attack. (Fair question, I mean they’re all pretty deadly.)

When they finally rounded the corner behind which the convention was well underway, the ghost seemed to freeze and vigorously look around.  
Dean saw in the corner of his eye, that Ed and Harry were standing just behind a sign saying “Do not enter.”

“Hey, toss the salt!“ Ed and Harry did as asked, very promptly, glad they didn’t have to get any closer. Dean caught both containers, handed one of them to Cas and the two of them formed a line from one side of the hallway to the other. That done, the three hunters let out a deep breath. The air around them was not freezing anymore, and all the fighting had gotten them worked up and sweating, and with the now warm air they felt as if they were in a sauna.

The ghost took a while until it started moving again, but when it realized that it couldn’t get past the salt barrier, it vanished.

On their way outside, the three hunters got a few strange looks, but most fans ignored them and two even came up to them to compliment them on their 'authentic hunter look', even though they, apparently, could’ve put more effort into actually looking like Cas, rather than just putting on a trenchcoat. The dust and sweat on their clothes and in their faces seemed to be viewed as some kind of make-up and as intentional. Ed and Harry stayed back at the convention, though they didn’t want to say why.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Back at the motel, Sam and Dean threw their trenchcoats onto one of the chairs. They were not eager to join all the fake Castiels at the convention again, and even more importantly — for Dean at least — wearing a trenchcoat just didn’t seem right. It was his angel’s signature piece of clothing. There was no rational reason why he should be the only one wearing one, but Dean couldn’t help it. He couldn’t explain it in any way other than, it just felt wrong.

After a quick shower, Sam pulled out his laptop and started to do more research, while Dean went showering. He had recognized some of the ghosts’ faces from his research back in the bunker. They were all victims of the experiments of course, but assuming that there weren’t many more than those 8 ghosts — 9, counting the doctor as well — that they had seen today, there had to be another connection between those patients.

Cas was sitting on the chair opposite Sam, staring out of the window. After a few minutes, he decided that he wanted to help, grabbed Dean’s laptop and set it on the table. He still had hardly any experience using computers and the internet, but how hard could it be. He ran into a problem as soon as he opened the device.

“Sam, what is Dean’s password?“

“What?“ Sam looked up from his screen and only now realized what Cas was doing. He hadn’t used Dean’s laptop in ages, but he was usually able to guess his brother’s password pretty quickly.

“Erm… Try your name,” he suggested.

“Why would Dean use my name as a password? It is hardly a secret to anyone he would need to protect his laptop from.“ Cas frowned, even more so when Sam started to chuckle.

“That’s true, but people often use the name of something or someone they care about.“

Cas typed in Sam’s suggestion and pressed enter.

“It says it’s the wrong password.“

“Did you write it with a capital C?“

“Yes.“

“Hmm…“ Sam went over a few other possibilities in his head. “Try Cas2008. Capital C again.“

Cas typed the new password and pressed enter.

“It worked,“ he said with a surprised voice.

Sam turned back to his own laptop, slightly amused by his brother’s choice, however not in the least surprised.

When Dean finally got out of the bathroom, Cas had found an internet browser and even managed to get to a search engine, but he didn’t seem to be able to find anything relevant for their case.

"Cas, what are you doing?“ he asked, more as a rhetorical question, since it was very unlikely that Cas would be using the laptop to watch a movie or for anything that he hadn’t seen him and Sam use it for. Or porn.

“I am helping the two of you with your research. Or I’m trying, but I mostly seem to be getting results that are hardly related to this case.“

Dean smirked briefly, but put on a serious face before Cas could see it.

"Let me see.“ He pulled up the third chair next to Cas and sat down. "Okay, so, we usually don’t enter fully worded and grammatically correct questions into Google,“ he commented after he had scrolled to the top of the page and started to explain to Cas how to get the best results and find the information you are looking for.

"Ha!“ Sam suddenly exclaimed, after a few minutes of silence. Dean had finished explaining the tips and tricks of search engines to the former angel and the two were now looking through articles together.

Sam waited for the other two to look up and continued, “get this, you know how there were 68 patients they did the experiments on? Well, most of them survived them. They were by no means cured, but most of the patients were either transferred, died due to natural causes or disease or survived until the experiments were shut down.“ Sam turned the laptop around so that Dean and Cas could see what was on the screen. "Only ten of the patients died from wounds inflicted during the experiments. Those are the photos from their obituaries.“

"Those are the ghosts that attacked us in the hospital,“ Dean said. "And… those two,“ he pointed at the picture of two patients that were not among the ghosts. "So we’re dealing with eleven ghosts? Ten patients and the doctor?“

"No, the ones we saw today are probably all of them. Those two were cremated. Five of them were buried in the local cemetery, just a five minute drive from here.“

"That’s great news, what about the rest?“, Dean asked.

"Well, that’s where it gets tricky,“ Sam noted. "They were the reason the experiments were shut down. They disappeared in the hospital. The only reason we know they died in the experiments, is from the doctor’s reports.“

Dean sighed. "Great. So we gotta go back there and find them. And we still have to figure out what happened to the doctor.“

 

A few hours later, they had found out that pretty much every reporter that had ever been to Coalburns, Michigan had written about the "crazy, sadistic doctor atSt. Alexander’s“, which was the local mental hospital. Most of the stories were aiming to be typical ghost stories to frighten people, or "scandals“ to show how horrible mental hospitals used to be and possibly still were. This made finding any information of worth a challenge at best, but finally they found the very first article that had been written about him. Unlike the rest of them, this one had been written by a family member, who had tried to show the human side of what everyone thought was nothing but a monster.

"Huh. He had prosopagnosia,“ Sam remarked in surprise.

"Prosopagnosia?“ Dean asked.

"Prosopagnosia is a disorder that prevents someone from recognizing faces,“ Cas immediately jumped in to explain.

"So, he was face blind.“

"Yeah, apparently,“ Sam continued to read the article "The writer states there that 'he distinguished friends and acquaintances by their voices and patients by their clothes.“

"This must be why he seemed so confused when he was facing the three of us. Maybe he thought that he was seeing the same person three times, because we were all wearing a trenchcoat,“ Cas stated.

Dean snorted. "Anyway, does this article say where he’s buried?“

Sam skimmed through the article. He was almost at the very end when his face dropped. "He was cremated.“

"Oh, great. So we’re looking for something his spirit is attached to,“ Dean groaned and leaned back in his chair. "Why can’t it ever just be easy.“

There were a few moments of silence as everyone was thinking about what that object could be. The article had of course not mentioned anything that was particularly dear to the doctor. It was Cas who finally broke the silence.

"We could start looking in the room with the typewriter. It looked like it used to be his office, maybe he kept a few personal items there.“

Sam nodded. "It’s a start. Better than nothing.“

 

The three agreed to dig up and burn the bodies as soon as nightfall hit and deal with the remaining four ghosts the next morning.

"But first, you gotta take a shower,“ Dean exclaimed, practically pushing Cas into the bathroom. "And I’m gonna go get dinner, I’m starving.“

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: St Alexander of Comana is the patron saint of charcoal burners. So, given that the town is called Coalburns, the hospital just had to get its name from him!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a super short one, but I couldn’t see it fit into the chapter before or after, so it got its own little chapter ;)

Ed and Harry hadn’t had a chance to get a look at the actual convention before they had gone ghost hunting, so after they’d gotten out of danger, they decided to check it out.

All in all, the event was pretty well organized. It wasn’t necessarily the kind of thing they usually went to, but the food was good, the fake haunted house was entertaining, although kind of pathetic compared to a real one, of course, and some fans sold really neat gadgets at the artist alley, aka the bunker. They were probably all fake, but hey, they looked damn good!

After they had run up and down the venue too many times to count and even been to one or another panel and talk, they got themselves two big coffees and sat down at 'Harvelle’s Roadhouse'. They had indeed been on the receiving end of a couple of snarky comments, and had been tempted to answer the taunts with sarcastic remarks, but more often than not, the other person hadn’t even payed attention to them long enough for them to react.

"Well, this place is definitely a great choice for catching ghosts on camera,“ Ed mumbled into his cup. Harry nodded, not really paying attention.

"The two Winchesters and their stupid angel may have fought the ghosts off today, but tomorrow he will see what happens to ghosts who attack a Ghostfacer!” Ed announced. Harry stayed silent.

“I mean, we didn’t even get a fair fight. You saw those three douchebags fight after we were out of the way, right? The ghost didn’t even really try! He attacked us, trying to kill us, but not those guys.”

Harry still didn’t answer.

“I bet it’s the trenchcoats! The trenchcoats are magical!”

He stared off at the distance for a while then continued abruptly: “Let’s get trenchcoats too. I’m not letting those Winchesters have a better chance because of some dumb piece of clothing.”

Harry nodded. “And maybe the fans here will stop bullying us then,” he mumbled too quietly for Ed to hear him.

Mostly in silence, they both finished their coffee and then decided to head back to their trailer. A few hours at a convention of a book series they didn’t even like were more than enough.

 


	12. Chapter 12

Digging up the graves and salting and burning the bodies had gone without a hitch. A benefit of small towns where many people died was apparently that they dug the holes only as deep as strictly necessary. They probably had to do it by hand themselves, the town’s funeral didn’t look like it had the money for a grave digger. There also seemed to be no police patrols around the cemetery, so they hadn’t had to worry about getting caught either.

Despite that, all three of them were less than happy that they had to go back to the convention the next morning. Dean was outright grumpy, mumbling unintelligible things as they left the motel, none of which were probably good things.

Sam and Dean had decided wear their trenchcoats again, since it seemed to confuse the doctor and any advantage was always welcome.

The plan they had come up with, was pretty simple. Trap the ghosts in salt rings, then look for their bodies — or the object it is tied to, in the case of the doctor — and burn them. Now, their plans didn’t always work out perfectly, but they were confident that this would work.

It was about 8am when the three hunters got to the venue. The convention had just opened for the day and there weren’t as many people there than the day before. At least not yet, which had been part of the reason they had decided to get this done as early as possible. Most of the fans in the queue were holding cups, presumably containing coffee, only a few of them were involved in a very animated discussion about… John’s parenting style? Wow, they did not have a lot of good things to say about it.

A few minutes later they were inside. The atmosphere was just as sleepy as it had been outside. No shouting, no running, no hustle and bustle of big crowds. Most people were still finishing setting up their stands and the 'Roadhouse' had also just opened.

Sam, Dean and Cas went straight to the fenced off hallway through which they had left the main convention the day before. They walked the same route as before, only this time, as soon as they had crossed over to the north wing, the temperature dropped drastically. Maybe the ghosts were alerted from the day before, or maybe they were distraught, because the five ghosts, who’s bodies the three hunters had burned the night before, were gone now. Either way, it looked like they were not going to let the intruders get very far.

The three hunters had automatically slowed down and started paying more attention to their surroundings at the sudden change of temperature. They were slowly walking forwards. Their first goal was the doctor’s office. On one hand, that was the most likely place for them to find the object his ghost was attached to, on the other hand, they hoped they might find the bodies there, or at least get an idea where he might have dragged those off to.

They didn’t get much further before the first ghost appeared in front of them. It was the same ghost that had attacked Dean in the big hall. Dean had just managed to grab a salt capsule from his pocket and was about to throw it, when the ghost disappeared again.

"Heh, he’s scared of us now,“ Dean joked. Too soon, it seemed, because just in that moment, all three of the remaining patients appeared in the hallway. Two in front of them, the third at their backs.

Dean threw the salt capsule, but the moment he let go, something pushed him from behind and the momentum was too large. The sphere missed its target and fell to the floor a few feet further.

What had pushed him turned out to be Sam, who had been taken by surprise by the attack of the ghost behind them. He hadn’t had the chance to fish for a trapping-capsule and was now fighting back with the iron rod in his hand. The second big swing went straight through the ghost and it vanished.

In the meantime, Cas had also grabbed one of the salt-ring capsules with his left hand, his right tightly holding the iron. He fixated his gaze on the ghost nearest to him, which looked like it was about to attack Dean together with the one that Dean had thrown at. He took a deep breath, and threw.

A split-second later, the capsule exploded and formed the expected ring around the ghost. It had worked!

"Good job, Cas. Two more to go here,“ Dean shouted in encouragement.

Having one ghost trapped meant having to be careful not to step onto the salt ring and set the ghost free again, which made fighting just that harder.

The ghost that Dean had tried to throw his capsule at started an attack, all of a sudden appearing right in front of the hunter. Reflexively, he swung his iron through the ghost, and using the short moment in which no ghost was in his sight, he dashed forward to retrieve his ghost-trapping sphere. When he turned around he saw both of the remaining patients materialize behind Cas and Sam. His brother, who was facing the right direction, managed to capture the ghost closer to him, thanks to quick reflexes. While he did that, the other ghost however, proceeded to attack Cas. Dean couldn’t throw his salt capsule, because Sam and Cas were blocking the way and since Sam was dealing with the other ghost, he would be just a little too slow to react.

"Cas, behind you!“ Dean warned his friend. Cas turned around, gripping his iron rod with both hands. When he saw the ghost, he lunged out, but before he could take his swing, the ghost vanished and Cas was hit in the face by… salt? He blinked a few times and then focussed on where the salt had come from.

"You’re welcome,“ the familiar voice of the blond Ghostfacer sounded from only a few feet away.

"Thank you,“ Cas said, expressionless.

The ghost made the mistake of reappearing right between Dean and the others, allowing Dean a clear shot and trapping it at once.

"Ha, gotcha!“ he exclaimed and looked back to his companions.

Cas was staring at the Ghostfacers, both of which were dressed in… a trenchcoat? Them too now? Cas narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "Why are you wearing trenchcoats.“

"Erm, aahh…,“ Ed stammered and looked over at his partner for support. Harry however, only shook his head with slightly widened eyes. "To… erm… blend in,“ Ed finished his answer. Cas raised an eyebrow but left it at that. 

"You, again?“ Dean asked when he spotted the two Ghostfacers. He looked as if he was about to say something else, but settled with giving them a dirty look. Instead he turned to his brother and made eye contact to check with him that they would go to look for the bodies. Getting past the two ghosts trapped next to each other without stepping into the salt circles turned out to be tricky since the two circles took up almost the whole width of the hallway. After they had gotten past that point however, getting to the doctor’s office was a simple task. Sam and Dean both tried to argue with the Ghostfacers to make them turn back, but they insisted on coming along, claiming that this was 'their job' and that, if they were alone, they’d be doing a much better job than the three hunters. Not that anybody had really expected the other to give in and leave.

Sam started to search the storage area beside the big hall, while the others went on to the office. The cages took up most of the wall opposite of the door and were empty enough that you could see the blank wall behind them. Dean nodded to Cas that he should check the cupboards on one side of the room while he would check the other side. The Ghostfacers initially just walked through the whole room once, to get everything on tape, then they went on to inspect the contents of the shelves.

"Hey, look at this,“ Harry whispered, stretching out a hand holding a small metal box to show to Ed.

"Ew, gross! Put it back, what even is that?“

Harry shrugged and took another look himself. He sniffed at it and immediately scrunched up his nose. He had to put a conscious effort into not trying to gag. Carefully, he put the box back to where he had taken it from.

"Hey!“ Dean shouted, his upper body half inside one of cupboards. "Hey, Cas, Sam!“ He shouted a little louder, wriggling back out. Sam came in from the big hall with long strides, while Cas walked over to Dean from his side of the room.

"I found something. Look,“ he opened the cupboard as wide as he could. "Hidden door. How much would you bet they’re in there? But it’s locked and the lock is still pretty strong.“

Sam eyed the lock quizzically and then grabbed something from his jeans pocket. "Let me,“ he said and Dean recognized the lock pick in his brother’s hand. Only a few moments later, Dean and Cas heard a click followed by the creaking sound of an opening door. "Got it,“ Sam mumbled, his head inside the cupboard, followed by: "Ew. Yep, there’s definitely something in there.“

He emerged from the cupboard, his face a grimace from the pungent smell. "It looks like the passage is big enough to walk, but the opening is small.“ He took his flashlight out of his jacket pocket and started crawling into the cupboard, followed by Dean and then Cas.

Ed and Harry slowly walked up to the open cupboard and stuck the camera into it, while watching the screen.

"It’s dark in there,“ Harry pointed out.

"Oh, really? What a surprise.“

"Should we really go in there? Who knows, it might collapse,“ Harry was squirming in his shoes.

"And let the Winchesters get all the credit? No way.“

Ed took a deep breath — well, maybe more like four — and followed the three hunters into the hidden passage. Harry finally did the same, but only very reluctantly.

The passage was indeed large enough for everyone to stand upright, but it was very narrow and it was almost impossible for Sam, Dean and Cas not to constantly brush against the walls with their arms and shoulders.

Thankfully, it didn’t take too long until they reached a point where the passage widened and opened up into a small room. And as expected, in one corner they could see something that could only be human remains.

"Do you think that’s all three of them?“ Dean uttered, voice muffled through his sleeve.

"I hope so, it’s hard to tell,“ Sam replied. "Let’s just burn them and get out of here.“ He readied his pack of matches, while Dean and Cas poured gasoline over the remains.

The Ghostfacers finally caught up and stopped dead when their gazes fell to the corner that the three hunters seemed to be focussed on.

"Ew!“

"Oh… Oh god…“

Harry pressed his hand tightly against his mouth while Ed turned around, squeezed past his partner and put a few strides between himself and the small room.

"Do they always look like that?“ Harry asked.

"No, but it’s never pleasant,“ Dean replied dismissively.

Ed had caught himself a bit and returned to where he could see what the others were doing.

"That is disgusting,“ he commented, but made sure to zoom into it as much as he could with his camera.

When Dean and Cas were sure they had poured enough gasoline onto the dead patients, they stepped back and Sam lit it on fire. They stayed just long enough to make sure that the remains were burning properly and then urged the Ghostfacers to leave quickly. They had no intention of staying any longer than necessary, in case the oxygen in there wasn’t replenished as soon as the fire consumed it.

Soon enough they all stumbled back inside the doctor’s office.

"Well, that was easy enough, only the crazy doctor left.“ Dean had barely finished the sentence, when all the open cupboard doors slammed shut and the temperature of the room dropped down to freezing temperatures once more.

"There you go,“ he sighed and got ready to fight. Sam had the only salt trap left, so Dean’s job was simply to keep the ghost occupied until his brother got a clear shot. Or find the object to which the doctor’s ghost was attached, in which case the whole problem would be solved much quicker.

Dean looked around the room, but before he could find anything that looked like it could have any importance, the ghost appeared in front of the two camera-carrying idiots who had frozen as soon as the cupboard doors had slammed shut.

"You gotta be kidding me,“ he mumbled and nodded to Cas that he should attack the ghost with him.

Thankfully, the trenchcoats confused the doctor long enough for Cas and Dean to get to the two idiots and swing at the ghost. The doctor disappeared a split-second before he would’ve been hit and reappeared behind the group of four an instant later.

The doctor stayed there for a moment without moving, but then he raised his knife and started to swing at the whole group. He seemed to have decided that, whoever they were, they were clearly his enemies.

"Behind you!“ Sam shouted, as he pulled the salt sphere out of his pocket. Dean and Cas spun around and Cas managed to hit the ghost just before his knife made contact with the shorter Ghostfacer. He was not gone for long, however. He reappeared only a second later, continuing his attack.

Sam threw his salt sphere, but just then Harry and Ed seemed to break out of their shock paralysis, turned around and charged forward, while dumping their whole bag of salt onto the ghost. Instead of hitting the ghost, Sam’s sphere hit Ed and fell to the ground, where the Ghostfacers promptly stepped on it, crushing it in the process.

Sam was about to make a comment, when the ghost reappeared next to Cas and stabbed forward. It didn’t seem to be directed at the former angel specifically, but the knife still struck him, cleanly entering his side.

"Cas!“ Dean cried out and immediately swung his iron rod at the attacker. The ghost vanished and with it the knife stuck in Cas’ side, causing blood to gush out. The former angel clutched his wound, pressing on it as well as he could. He stumbled forward a few steps and supported himself on the old desk. Dean watched with widened eyes and came to Cas’ aid, while he tried to keep an eye out for the ghost that would undoubtedly come back sooner rather than later.

"I got it, take care of Cas!“ Dean heard his brother say next to him. He hadn’t realized that Sam had moved from his spot next to the cupboard, but he was very thankful.

The younger hunter relieved Cas of his iron rod, since the former angel was not in a state where he would be able to properly defend himself anyway, and handed it to Harry.

"Swing as soon as you see him. Try not to hit any of us.“

Dean helped Cas slide down the desk and sit on the floor, back propped up against the side of the desk for support, Dean’s hand pressed against Cas’, both trying to keep the wound from bleeding too much.

"Dean, I’m sorry,“ Cas mumbled, staring into those green eyes.

"Cas, this is not your fault. It’s okay. You’re gonna be all right.“ Dean’s voice was wavering, but he couldn’t — he _wouldn’t_ — accept that Cas’ wound was anything too serious.

Sam was doing a good job holding the ghost off, with a bit of help from Ed and Harry, who seemed to have pretty good reflexes in their panicked state. Despite this, however, they couldn’t beat the ghost unless they found the object it was attached to. And as busy as Sam was with fighting, he couldn’t look for it.

Dean changed the hand with which he was pressing on Cas’ wound and got into a position where he could have a better look through the room. There really wasn’t much to see, except the disgusting jars in the shelves and heaps of paper all over the floor and the desk. Beneath his hand, Cas squirmed and winced.  
"Cas, don’t move. Just stay as still as you can, we’ll get you out of here.“

"No, Dean…“ Dean looked back to his former angel and saw that he seemed to be trying to turn his torso to the desk and reach under it.

"There’s something down there…,“ he groaned, his face distorted from the pain.

Dean’s gaze followed the direction into which Cas was reaching and his eyes met the shadow of a small object under the desk.

"Wait, let me,“ Dean said. "You just make sure to stay still, and keep pressure on that wound. You’re not bleeding out on me!“

Dean fumbled around under the desk until his fingers touched a rough leather-like surface. Carefully he grabbed the object and pulled it out.

"A notebook,“ he declared for Cas. It was indeed bound in leather. It didn’t look too different from John’s journal, only much older and even more worn out. Dean opened it and took a look inside.

'Number 42' was written at the top of the page, followed by almost indecipherable scribbles. 'Face', 'sides', 'kitchen knife', 'screamed', 'repeat’ and 'results' was all Dean could read with certainty.

"This must have been where that sick bastard wrote down what he did to those patients. This could be it.“ He glanced to Cas to make sure he was still holding on and then pulled his bottle of gasoline out of his jacket.

He made sure to push any paper in the vicinity far enough away that it wouldn’t catch fire, drenched the notebook in gasoline and ignited it.

Not a second too early, because Sam and the two Ghostfacers were already panting and only barely keeping up with the ghost’s attacks.

Sam was just about to make another swing, when the ghost stopped dead in its tracks and only a moment later went up in flames.

The Ghostfacers looked incredibly relieved and hardly even tried to hide it. Sam took a deep breath, exhaled and looked over to Dean. "Took you long enough-,“ he joked, but stopped himself when his eyes found Cas. The skin of the former angel had taken on a sickly pale color, eyes only half-open. Next to him was a puddle of blood that was way too big to not be a cause of concern.

Dean took over the job of keeping pressure on the wound again. "Cas, help me take your coat off.“ He helped the former angel pull his arms out of the sleeves and pushed the coat out of the way to not get it any dirtier than it already was. Ripping a bigger hole into Cas’ shirt he managed to get a better look at the wound. It looked like it wasn’t too deep and probably hadn’t hit any organs, but it was still bleeding profusely.

Dean’s eyes widened a little, but he tried to put on a brave face for Cas. "You’re gonna be fine, it’s not that bad.“ He eyed the wound once more then instructed Cas to keep pressing on it and started taking his coat and shirt off.

"Sam, give me your shirt,“ he urged, while he started to fold his shirt into a makeshift bandage and tied it around Cas’ waist. He then proceeded to do the same with Sam’s shirt, hoping that that would stop the bleeding. Or at least slow it down enough to get the former angel to the Impala.

Carefully, he helped Cas up and propped one of his arms around his own shoulders. "Sam, take the other side and help me get him out of here. We gotta get him stitched up as soon as possible.“

As fast as they dared, they made their way out of the doctor’s office and through the big hall and the hallway. Ed and Harry, who had only stared at the wounded Cas at first, picked Sam and Dean’s trenchcoats and the weapons they had left on the floor and followed them.

As soon as the three hunters stumbled around the last corner to the actual convention, someone shouted something unintelligible and three dozen heads turned to see what was happening. Most of them froze in shock at the sight of the blood-stained shirts, but a few jumped into action and came running to see if they could help. One girl wanted to call 911 and a guy mumbled something about a first aid kit and turned around to make his way through the crowd.

"Woah, calm down everyone!“ Dean burst out. "It’s not… it’s…“

"The blood is part of the costume,“ Cas explained for him. To prove his point he took his arms from Sam and Deans shoulders and stood up straight. From the slight hiss he gave when he did that, and from how tense he was — even more so than usually — Sam and Dean could tell that it hurt. It hurt as much as it looked like. But it must have been less obvious to anyone who didn’t know Cas as well as they did, because the other con guests seemed to be willing to believe him. Albeit tentatively.

"As you can see, I am in perfectly good shape,“ Cas said and took a few steps forward to prove his point. This seemed to convince most of the staring con guests. Some congratulated him on the realistic cosplay and then turned around to go their own ways.

As soon as Dean was sure nobody was actively watching them anymore he rushed forward to support Cas, who gladly leaned on Dean. The rest of the way outside, they made sure to make it look like Cas didn’t really need the support as much as they could, but he still had to prove that he was 'fine' two more times.

When they finally got out of the building, Dean immediately guided Cas towards the Ghostfacers’ van, which was parked surprisingly close to the entrance.

"Sam, go get the first aid stuff from the Impala and meet us at the van.“ Dean had barely even finished the sentence before Sam left them, taking long strides towards where they had parked.

The Ghostfacers wanted to protest when they realized where Dean and Cas were heading, but one look from Dean was enough to shut them up before they had even opened their mouths. In the van, Dean pulled out one of the chairs and eased Cas onto it. The shirts around his waist had taken an even darker red color. The sooner they could stitch up the wound and put a proper bandage on it, the better.

"I’m sorry, Dean.“ Cas groaned.

"You’re sorry? For what?“

"I was no help at all, and now I’m just creating more problems and cause for you and Sam to worry.“ Cas tried to sit up straighter, but grimaced at the movement and dropped the attempt with resignation.

"Don’t be ridiculous! You were the one who found the notebook.“ Dean kept pressing on Cas’s wound. "If you hadn’t been stabbed, it would’ve been me. Or Sam. And if you hadn’t found the notebook, who knows…“ his voice trailed off and he looked into Cas’s eyes. His own eyes full of worry, expressing what he didn’t dare to say out loud.

Only a minute later, Sam finally came back with a bottle of high percentage alcohol, needle and thread and a big pack of bandages. Cas didn’t make a sound the whole time Dean spent on stitching the wound, although his face lost the last bit of color it’d still had left.

"All done,“ Dean announced as he was fastening the last bit of the bandage. "Congratulations, you got your first official battle wound as a hunter!“ He sounded proud, but anyone who knew him better could tell that it was just a disguise for his concern. Cas would be fine. It hadn’t been as bad a wound as it had looked like at first, but he had lost quite a bit of blood. And a wound was always worse than no wound.

"Thank you, Dean.“ Cas smiled a genuinely happy smile, despite the pain. "I promise you, I will become a better hunter.“

"First you focus on getting better, period.“

 


	13. Chapter 13

"Do we really have to go back again?“ Dean complained as he pulled the Impala into the car park in front of the old hospital.

"It’s just to let Becky know that the ghosts are dealt with. I don’t want to be here any more than you do.“ Sam answered.

Cas and Dean had gone back to the motel as soon as possible after Cas’s wound had been taken care of. In the meantime, Sam had gone to look for Becky, but surprisingly, she had been impossible to find. He had however come across a group of female fans — they had called themselves 'fangirls' — who had pulled him into a… very interesting discussion.

They had apparently seen Dean and Cas when they had been on their way outside and had wanted to know if they were a couple. Of course, Sam had had to tell them that they weren’t, but his voice had to have given away what he was really thinking of their relationship. Long story short, they had suggested that they could help set the two of them up. And while another day of rest would’ve been good for Cas, with the former angel’s obliviousness and Dean’s stubbornness in ignoring his own feelings, this was just too good an opportunity to pass on.

"Try to get them to the stage around 4pm,“ the girls had said. They hadn’t explained what exactly they had planned, but maybe they had still had to fully figure it out.

Sam, Dean and Cas walked around the convention area for a while without a specific plan or goal. After they had covered about half of the area, Sam started to gently guide the other two towards the stage.

"Looks like there’s a lot of people around the stage, let’s check there,“ Sam suggested.

The three made their way through the crowd to get to the stage area. The seats in front of the stage were all taken and a lot of people even sat on the floor or stood leaning against the walls. On the stage itself, they could see Becky — there she was! — and another girl and a guy in staff shirts. Three people in costumes were just about to get off the stage, each of them holding a small paper bag with the _Supernatural_ logo on them.

"Okay, next we have the group cosplay!“ Becky announced, much louder than comfortable for the ears. "First of all, let me just say that we had so many great cosplays this time and we had much more groups then we’ve ever had before, so instead of just the top three, we decided that the top five should get a price…“

She rambled on a bit longer about what makes a 'good group cosplay'. Sam, Dean and Cas didn’t listen and judging from his face, Dean was seriously considering simply leaving.

"Fourth place are… the Ghostfacers.“ The crowd stayed silent. "Oh, come on guys, just because the characters aren’t great doesn’t mean that the cosplay can’t be either!“ Hesitantly, the audience started clapping, but the applause was very reserved and died down soon when the expected cosplayers didn’t come to the stage.

"Ghostfacers?“ Becky called again. "Does anyone know them or know where they are?“

"Here! Here! They’re here!“ a girl came running through the door, looking like she had just tried to sprint a marathon.

"They won’t believe me that they’ve won something, but they’re coming! Two minutes!“ Panting, she leaned against the first chair she could find, trying to get as much air into her lungs as possible.

Sure enough, Ed and Harry came strolling through the lobby soon after. They looked about as confused as the crowd had sounded, but the runner girl was excited enough for ten people. As soon as the Ghostfacers entered the room she straightened up, her eyes sparkling with joy.

"There they are,“ Becky said. "Come up here you guys, you’re fourth place, congratulations!“

Impatiently, she waited for the two to get on stage and went to hand them their paper bags. Ed and Harry took them, still looking very confused, but slowly starting to realize what was happening.

"Besides the extraordinarily detailed costumes, what impressed us the most about these two was their almost perfect characterization,“ explained the guy in the staff shirt. "One of our judges saw them on Friday, running through an empty hallway with gloriously panicked expressions on their faces.“

He turned to Ed and Harry. "Congratulations.“

Ed made an attempt to grab the microphone — his confused expression had changed to an angry one at the word 'almost' — but the announcer turned around too quickly and Ed was left standing there empty-handed.

Third place was a large group with people cosplaying Sam, Dean, Cas, Bobby, Charlie, Crowley and a ghost from one of the earlier books that nobody really remembered. They received special compliments for the details on their costumes, but the really impressive part was the sheer size of the group.

"Second place are… Dean and Cas, cosplayed by Alex and Brian,“ Becky announced and the whole room immediately broke out in ear-numbing applause and screaming. They had to be very well-known and popular. The crowd at the front split into two groups to make way for the Cas cosplayer, who had a large pair of wings fastened to his back. At first the three hunters thought they were simply black, but as he was walking up the steps to the stage and the bright stage lights hit them, they started shimmering in all shades of green and blue.

"First of all, of course…,“ the staff girl on stage started and pointed at the wings with both hands. “The craftsmanship of these is unbelievable. And the chemistry that you two have is absolutely perfect. Something like that just can’t be faked and you two definitely have it, and you know how to use that in your cosplays. Congratulations you two!“

Becky handed them their paper bags. They accepted them enthusiastically, then the Dean cosplayer turned around and pulled the Cas cosplayer into a kiss. The crowd cheered even more.

Cas tilted his head and observed the two on the stage interestedly. Dean on the other hand seemed uncomfortable, stepping from one foot onto the other and glancing at Cas again and again, as if to see what he thought of what was happening on stage.

"Okay. Now, the winner of this contest is a special case, because they haven’t actually signed up for the contest themselves, but all of our sign-up coordinators got so many requests to sign them up regardless, we just had to take a look and it was justified.

"The winners are Sam, Dean and Cas!“ Becky pointed at them, since she could obviously not identify them by their real names. The spotlight was moved to them and people immediately started pushing them towards the stage. They tried to fight off the crowd at first, but there were simply too many people. Eventually they resigned and made their way to the stage on their own.

Becky was grinning like the crazy person she was as she handed them the paper bags. Sam took a quick look inside and found it filled with copies of some of the not officially published books as well as some things they had seen at stands in the artist alley the day before. The staff guy — his name tag said 'Ben' — came over to them to shake their hands and congratulate them. Then he turned back to the audience.

"The winners of the group cosplay contest. Why did we choose them when they didn’t even sign up themselves? Well…“ He paused and briefly looked over his shoulder to the three hunters.

"I mean, just look at them. The costumes are perfect and those guys perfectly fit any description you can find in the books. But most importantly, of course…“ his voice trailed off and he was smirking as he was leaving the audience in suspense.

"Most importantly…,“ the staff girl continued, "the longing stares of Cas and Dean when the other isn’t looking and even more so the looks when their eyes meet… They were perfect. As we already said in regards to Alex and Brian, the kind of feelings conveyed in these looks simply cannot be faked. Even if they seemed to try to hide it as much as the real Cas and Dean would.“

Dean’s face had gotten redder and redder while the girl had been talking and he looked like he would’ve liked nothing better than to run off the back of the stage.

When Cas turned to look at Dean he had an interested and… was that a hopeful look on his face?

"Is this true, Dean?“ Cas asked. "Do you have… feelings for me?“

Dean’s first thought was, as always, that he should just deny everything. He did not have romantic feelings for Cas of all people. They were friends. Best friends, even. But that was all.

Except that he knew that wasn’t true. And that hopeful expression in those sky blue eyes… It made him hopeful himself. And he couldn’t lie to Cas when he was looking at him like that. This was even worse than when Sammy pulled his puppy dog eyes.

"I… Y-…“ Dean’s voice cracked and he cleared his throat before continuing. "Yeah. Yeah, Cas, I do.“ He was looking at his feet, but forced himself to lift his head and look into Cas’s eyes. "Why would you not tell me that?“ Cas squinted as he was asking that question.

The audience was remarkably quiet. So quiet that you could even hear Harry starting to look through the contents of his paper bag, by which he immediately earned himself a "Shush“ from the other cosplayers on stage.

"Cas… I’m a hunter and you’re… you. Why would you ever be interested in me?“

"Dean, you of all people should know that love does not follow logic,“ Cas argued. Dean did not look convinced.

"But…“

Cas glanced at the two cosplayers that came second and then pulled Dean into a kiss like he had seen these two do. Dean’s eyes widened for a second, but he was so surprised that he wouldn’t have been able to do anything other than go along with it, even if he’d wanted to.

The audience broke out in applause and cheers. To them it was probably just some excellent acting. Maybe improvised, maybe rehearsed, but everyone could feel the honesty in every word.

After a few long seconds Cas pulled back and looked deep into Dean’s eyes.

"Dean, I fell in love with you even before I saved you from hell, although I didn’t know what the feeling was back then. But you are a great man and I have made… so many mistakes. I never thought-“

"Cas, I don’t care.“

Cas stared at Dean as if he spoke a language that Cas had never even heard of.

"We’ve all made mistakes. I don’t care about the mistakes. The important thing is that you always came back. We can always fix things together. We’re family.“

"Aww!“ the whole crowd exclaimed in unison.

"Oh, shut up!“ Dean shouted. "Come on, let’s go. We’re not their entertainment,“ he said to Cas and Sam.

"Oh yeah, and Becky, the ghosts are dealt with, so you’re welcome. And next time… don’t.“

He grabbed Cas’s arm and jumped off the back of the stage, almost knocking over a few of the staff members that had watched from there.

"Never again,“ he mumbled. Secretly however, he was very glad he had made the trip. He looked over to Cas, who returned his loving gaze.

Very glad indeed.

 


End file.
